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Because I never got to when it first came out, I'm playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (thanks /r/gameswap!). I have to say, a lot of older games that I play aren't as fun as I thought because I've been so spoiled by more modern game design, but PoP bucks that trend easily. Sure, the combat is finicky and not very entertaining, but the acrobatic platforming is fantastic, and the story is pretty interesting. I love the rewind mechanic too, because it allows trial and error without the feeling of actual failure.

The second game I've been loving is Radiant Historia for the DS. I've never been much of a JRPG fan because of my disdain for turn based combat, but I have to say that this is a really great game. The combat is still turn-based, but its use of a grid and being able to manipulate enemies around that grid is pretty cool and adds a welcome new element to the usual turn based fighting. But the real reason I'm playing this is because it has a really engaging story. You're not some plucky teenager who is the Chosen One - you're a high value military man in the middle of a devastating war. The time travel aspect is so neat, and the characters are really well done too. There's always some exciting new development around the corner.

Sands of Time really is a great game. Although the combat does get a bit repetitious, I feel like it's still sort of satisfying in a way. It's a nice ballet. It's not inherently going to be entertaining, but you can sort of entertain yourself by going as over the top with it as possible. One of my favorite games overall, though, really. I also highly recommend both sequels, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones. Most people agree that they're not quite so good as Sands of Time, but I personally think they're all sort of on par.

Warrior Within has significantly deeper combat and a bigger time-travel mechanic that has to do with working your way through the same area by moving between the past and present. The game gets a lot of hate for it's shift in tone (ridiculous, over-the-top blood & grit, pointless cursing and half-naked women, and a heavy metal songs in some parts of the soundtrack), but you can turn off the blood, the cursing & women aren't in the story almost at all, and the heavy metal only shows up three times as memory serves. It's also a bit longer than Sands of Time, and while the story isn't quite as good overall, the second half of the story is very strong.

The Two Thrones is actually probably my least favorite of the trilogy, but a lot of people think it's better than Warrior Within, so take that as you will. The story is significantly better than WW and possibly even better than SoT, and the game implements a decent stealth system. The game actually features some decent boss battles too, and a couple of exciting and enjoyable chariot race sequences. The game is flawed though- sequences playing as "The Dark Prince," (a big point the game sold itself on) are essentially pure button mashing, and there's way too many quicktime events. These two aspects really hurt replayability for me- I've probably played SoT and WW about 5 times through, each, but TTT only twice, maybe three times.

Roommates and I have been working through Monaco for the past few days. It's not often that we get to work together, so I've hooked my laptop up to our TV for some classic couch co-op. We may not be the most stealthy or efficient thieves, but we get the job done. We all have roles that were good at, even if they aren't the best for the situation, and the "strategies" we come up with are a lot of fun.

The design choices and icons were a bit confusing at first but after a few levels you get used to the blueprint layout. Since were all on the same screen, the view stretches out so that we all fit. If we're all spread out we get a full view of the floor and can plan accordingly. I've yet to play online co-op so I don't know if it happens there too, if someone else could chime in. Controller support works fine, but my one roommate had trouble with keyboard controls because you couldn't get as fine movement. Playing the Mole was the most comfortable since he moves orthographically.

We're still working on perfecting the levels, and the second set are proving to be a challenge. I can't wait for custom content and seeing what heists the community can come up with.

Yes, Monaco has been excellent. I did a few levels solo but the fun ramps up exponentially when you get other people involved, and the controls are dead simple there is barely a learning curve yet it still has difficulty.

I love how I can plug four controllers into my computer and get local co-op. I had previously thought this to be something only consoles could do. It really makes me wonder why more games don't allow for it.

I've just won my first game of Civilization V on Emperor and it was really exciting. I normally have been playing on Prince but every game is just a runaway where I am destroying everyone.

This last game I chose Korea, intending to go for a science victory. I spawned near the top of a large continent with a mountain chain to the West, ocean to the East, and Carthage to the south. I quickly got four cities set up while making sure to maintain enough Archers for defense in case Carthage decided to invade.
Around turn 100 Carthage finally decided to invade but my composite bowman easily destroyed her catapults, archers, and warriors. After destroying the majority of her units I started pushing into her territory intending to capture her second largest city; however, as my units marched on her city she offered me a peace treaty that was too good to pass up (lots of gold, luxury resources, etc.) so I accepted.

I now was making a ton of money and decided to buy the alliance of a few city states around me: Cahokia to the west and Lisbon to the south (on a small island surrounded by Carthage territory). These city states gave me a nice boost in happiness. Around this time I had discovered all of the other civs but one.France was being a dick but Arabia and India were jointly fighting him back into the corner of the continent. Around the time France/India/Arabia made peace, Carthage decided to attack my city state ally: Lisbon.

I gifted the city state my turtle ships to help fight off Carthage and I declared war in the North, hoping that opening up a second front would draw some pressure away from Lisbon. It was partially effective - my turtle ships arrived in enough time to take out many of Carthage's ships but in the end Carthage's forces overwhelmed the city.

I was frankly, quite PO'd, and payed off Arabia (Carthages Eastern Neighbor) to attack her. While Arabia attacked from the East I attacked from the North and the West. I had now taken 3 out of her 4 cities and quickly sent units to help liberate Lisbon. Carthage wasn't putting up much of a fight, instead drawing her units around her capital. Arabia made peace with Carthage after France once again declared war on him. I made peace as well, deciding that it would be a good idea to have a civilization as a buffer state between myself and the sprawling empire of Arabia.

I had now secured the Western part of the continent and sent my troops to the front lines in case of an invasion. I now turned to pumping out as much science as possible in order to win a science victory. I knew I was in trouble when Gandhi built the united nations, I was just finishing up third part in my space program but so was Arabia. Meanwhile, Gandhi had bought off most of the city states without my knowledge. 9 votes were needed to win the diplomatic victory and Gandhi had 9, meanwhile I had 6 (mostly from the other civs voting for me). I quickly bought off as many city states as I could knowing that this election would probably decide the winner. I now had 9 votes for me against Gandhi's 6 however I figured I better be safe and sold the majority of my units in order to buy off another one. Luckily I did, in the last turn Gandhi succeeded in a coup to throw me out of Venice. I just had the 9 votes to scrape out the win and succeeded in my first emperor win.

If you haven't picked up Civ yet you should do so with the warning that you may find that time magically disappears.

I hate Civ 5's difficulty levels. Not for any other reason than that the game lies to you. Both the manual and in-game information tells you that Prince is even; the AI nor yourself gain any bonuses. Anyone who's played one round knows that this is crap. The AI has a passive, hidden happiness bonus that lets them settle way earlier and way more than you at the start of the game.

Well, the lies and the fact that the AI isn't great, and heavily reliant on artificial boosts at any higher difficulties in order to compete with the players & deal with the one unit per tile system that has a tendency to expose AI weaknesses.

I got Dragon Age: Origins last week. I haven't had that much time to play it, but so far I love it. The combat feels nice, pausing every few seconds to assign everyone something to do. I went with an elf mage as my character, and paralyzing the strong enemy, taking out it's supporting cast, then focusing all of my characters on it feels great. Right now I'm still not that good at the combat, and I end up having a character fall during most encounters. The blood stains look a little overdone at some points, but they're fun to look at. But mostly, I love the world. The characters are fun and interesting (right now, I really enjoy the banter between Morrigan and Alistair). The lore is deep and fun to read, and I can't wait to play more of it. If only 2 wasn't as bad as I have heard

Origins is pretty deep; it reminds me of old-style, level-based min/maxing games (nowadays, min/maxing seems to be based entirely around item grinding). Be warned that the Perks and gear found in the DLC are orders of magnitude better than what you'll find in the base game (and that you'll have to dig for the good stuff on disc, while the goodies in the DLC will pretty much fall in your lap). Awakening is worth playing, though it's over a bit suddenly and the power level is what I would describe as "crazy town."

Dragon Age II is very different. I couldn't finish it (by the end of Act I, you've seen every environment in the game), though I'm told the game is very enjoyable if you play as a Rogue.

I personally did not have an enjoyable experience with Dragon Age 2. The main reasons I liked DA:O were the companions (their humour, stories, banter, etc.), and I liked the "precision combat" (if that makes sense). I could simply not get into DA2 because of the (in my opinion) complete lack of character in companions. I also disliked the way the new combat handled. Instead of a few strong enemies, there were a TON of really shitty weak enemies, and it became a kite + AoE fest. If I want to have World of Warcraft combat I'd play that, thank you very much.

Its an enjoyable experience... if you ignore half of the characters and the many, many issues it has. its not quite as awful as a lot of people make it seem, but its hated on for good reasons. If someone still wants to play it, get it for as cheap as you can.

The story telling and voice acting is top notch. I've never felt such strong connections to characters than I have with this game. Having said that, the entire ending gave me chills and had my heart pumping.

I've been on Kerbal Space Program. It's a really fun game where you build your own space program, send ships to the moon, build space stations, explore the solar system and generally get to see a lot of explosions.

It's currently in alpha and has a lot of very cool features planned and coming with each new update adding so much more. The next one will allow you to plant flags which while small and subtle adds a lot of depth to your little sandbox.

If you do plan to buy and play Kerbal just know that it has a learning curve as vertical as your spaceship launches will should be. You're going to see a lot of failed experiments. It's more funny than anything. To sum up Kerbal in one sentence; My first moon lander ran out of fuel, so I sent up a rescue mission and they also ran out of fuel. Now I have to sent two more rescue missions.

What would you say to someone who is on the fence about this game after trying the demo? Does the full career mode give you more direct goals such as getting things into orbit and creating moon bases, or is it completely open?

Career mode isn't implemented yet. The game is only at version 0.18 (soon to be 0.2).

The full version gives you a lot more content, particularly with relation to space planes and space stations and all future (non-DLC) updates. Career mode sounds awesome and I can't wait for it.

My suggestion is try browsing /r/kerbalspaceprogram for 5 minutes and see if it appeals to you. This is the first game where I've been proud of my own accomplishments that I wish to share them. Not even Minecraft made me feel that way. If you look at people's moon landers or space ships and think "I want to be able to do that" then Kerbal is probably for you in it's current state.

If you're still thinking "I want a career mode" then it's fine to wait until it's fully implemented. There are lots of other games to tide you over until then.

I played the beta/demo/whatever of Papers, Please and quite enjoyed it, and look forward to the final product.

This also got me to decide to try and play some more indie games I own but never touched.

Lone Survivor happened to be installed, so I started it.

Once I figured out you could change the aspect ratio with Q and S, I was able to lower it to an acceptable level (Those graphics in 1080p made my eyes bleed). The game itself is interesting. It's a 2D sidescrolling survival/horror game where you have a home-base apartment, and you're heading out into the complex full of monsters to scavenge food and supplies and figure out what the fuck is going on. It's clear within the first 5 minutes that things aren't what they seem, and this "isn't really happening". I'm now curious to see if what I believe is going on is the case.

Mechanically, the game controls simply and by keyboard only. Arrow keys to move, X for context-sensitive actions, C draws/holsters your gun, F for flashlight on/off, spacebar for inventory and hotkeys 1-3 for various items. It's nice that it was boiled down so much, but I wouldn't have minded being able to remap some keys. I'm guessing this has to have been a conscious choice because otherwise you could easily play the game with one hand.

Design wise, you're moving around in a space with 3 dimensions and directions other than just left and right but with a 2D side view. This makes navigating the hallways a little difficult for me, even with the maps you find. When you're at the end of a hallway going North/South and you look at your map and see you need to go West, but there's 3 directional options on screen, it can sometimes be a little trial and error to choose the right one.

Gameplay consists of making some progress toward the current goal, avoiding/killing some monsters, collecting some supplies, and finding a mirror that will teleport you back to your apartment. Sleeping saves the game and starts a new day. The mirrors are spaced out the right distance that for the most part you can push forward each day and right about the time the Lone Survivor starts complaining about sleep, you find a new one. You can then use the mirror in your apartment to teleport to the last mirror you came from so there's less backtracking.

I died a few times on this part. I don't mind failing/dying when it's a matter of a poor decision I made or because I have a low skill level. It's the first time control is taken away from you that the game then immediately puts you in danger because of it. It wasn't consistent internally. It wasn't a surprise to me or to the character, but I was still forced to deal with it in the dumbest way possible, and then had to replay the section over a few times to memorize the hallways and the directions to take. It just became a tedious trial and error exercise that I felt was easily avoidable narratively.

Anyway, I'm interested to see where it goes, and what's "really going on", barring another poor sequence.

So far I'm having a lot of fun. Some things are a little rough and awkward, but the underlying game is great. I love how sidequests constantly end up being a lot bigger than I expected them to be. It makes it feel a lot less gamey.

Just got to the Strip recently and am now super confused as to what I'm supposed to do next. It's a bit frustrating.

I think I know what you mean when you are confused about what to do once you get to the strip, they slam like 4 different quests on you at one time. Go to the Lucky 38 (here), from there you should be able to find Benny if you go to the right, past all the roulette wheels and black jack tables. Talk to him and the main quest should be a bit more clear from there.

It can get to that point on your first play through. I found just talking to important people can really help you figure stuff out. I think F: NV is one of the games that is better on your second and third play through.

Did you get any mods? There are a lot of small things that make it a much better experience and are fine for a first playthrough.

Just got to the Strip recently and am now super confused as to what I'm supposed to do next. It's a bit frustrating.

I think that is an issue with a lot of games that have a big destination in the distance, once you finally get there I just say "Now what?" I would recommend finding the Kings faction in Freeside and start with some of their quests, you'll run into a lot of other stuff that way.

Very nice texture pack that is much higher resolution than vanilla. Some textures look a bit too different than vanilla for me, but overall it's a nice improvement. Can be used along side POCO BUENO texture pack.

Adds a bit more vegetation to the environment. Some trees look a bit out of place, but it's a big improvement over vanilla New Vegas' cactus per mile. Dead version is closer to vanilla, but I prefer fertile.

There are quite a few new UI mods since the last time I played, so I'm not sure if this is still the best recommendation, but I liked MTUI a lot.

When you have downloaded and installed everything run BOSS to get the proper load order.

Lots of fixes, big and small, that let you hand-tune how much realism you want and where on the RPG--Shooter continuum you want the game to fall. It handles big changes like switching character health from the default, RPG-style Stats-and-Level based HP counter to a shooter-style one that bases it entirely off the character's Endurance stat (including the player), to little things like the condition of you goggles causing little cracks in the UI that obstruct your vision. My personal favorite feature is the ability to jack your carrying capacity up to the maximum, as if that little piece of bean-counting ever improved anyone's gaming experience. Even adds things like bullet time and a sprint function.

I had to look up on the wiki how to go to the NCR ending. One NPC mentions it to you once, it's off the beaten path (it's in the 3rd cell of the strip, where few quests take you), and there's no quest marker.

I absolutely love this game (I've beaten it 8 or 9 times), and am really sad that it shipped when it did. Another 6 months of quality assurance...well, probably would have resulted in a game that slightly larger and just as unfinished, considering just about everything that the Interplay/Black Isle/Troika/Obsidian crew has created was beautiful, detailed, and shipped 80% done. But if it had a Gears of War 3 or BioShock Infinite level of polish...people would still be raving about it 10 years later.

Mars: War Logs - I originally bought it simply because it was a sci-fi RPG and there really aren't enough of those. I'm getting tired of elves and swords and great, big, prophecies. So far I'm enjoying the game. The combat's engaging enough to keep me hooked to the game, I'm actually excited when I see a fight about to start. The story itself is passable, but the dialouge, oh dear god the dialouge! It's awful! The voice acting's atrocious at times and the writing itself is incredibly basic without any subtlety. The lore however is pretty interesting. Overall, I'd say it was worth buying though.

Rayman Origins - Started a new game after my old one got deleted in a system restore. I'm trying to get perfect scores on each level and so far it is proving to be a ton of fun. I forgot just how beautiful the game looks. The art design behind each world is just so much fun. In particular, I enjoy the ice world being reminiscent of a refreshing drink with all the straws and the giant pools of punch. Such a lovely game! Really hope Legends comes out for PC.

Civilization V - One of my favorite games of all time (I even like it better than Civ IV, now come at me!). I've started trying to learn the Gods and Kings expansion, but some of the changes really screwed up my game. I used to play for a cultural victory, but I still can't figure out the fastest way to do that in this expansion. So I've started trying out different strategies, I'm trying a militaristic one against my friends right now which is odd since I only ever dabbled in military a tiny bit before. Let's hope it works out!

Next week I'll try getting to Warlock: Master of the Arcane, and maybe a little bit of FEZ.

I've been replaying Dishonored again, this time with the mentality "You can quicksave, but not quickload." The first few times I would quickload whenever I cocked up the stealth. Now I always cock up the stealth, swashbuckle my way out of a fight with alarms blaring all around me, look at the pile of bodies surround me and think "Yes! My actions finally carry consequences!"

If you play Dishonored worrying about a perfect score, you're missing out. This feels like the way the game was meant to be played.

How you choose to save and load can completely change the game experience. And I find that by electively restricting myself I can improve the difficulty level, immersion, and sense of accomplishment.

I went through BioShock my first time choosing to not use the resurrection chambers because I thought they made the game too easy. Instead, I had to reload. But I also chose not to save like a mad man. So it made me a lot more willing to use every resource and ounce of skill I had to deal with major fights. I'd pull out the stops more and it gave me a more epic experience than I typically get from a single player FPS. Combined with the plot and environment of BioShock and the result was amazing.

Similarly quick save and load can be abused way too easily in Bethesda games like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout 3/NV.

I am enjoying it so far. Some things about the cashshop rub me the wrong way - specifically the pay to respec part of the talents system and the small bank - but honestly I expect to drop money on this game eventually because it is enjoyable. Nothing else in the shop interests me. I think they get the action style combat down better than any other MMO I've played - Tera and Guild Wars 2 included - and the Foundary is a really cool expansion on the level creator business found in prior Cryptic games. I've played through most custom content than I have dev made content at this point and I really feel like this, seemingly the core of the game, needs to be what is stressed about Neverwinter.

I've also been playing The Show a lot, but /r/games could give a shit about sports games.

The Show is possibly the best sports game I have ever played. Honestly I thought no baseball game would beat MVP 2005, but I picked up TheShow this year. It may obvious for a baseball game, but it perfectly recreates the game. You can really immerse yourself in it. My favourite part is Road to the Show. If I am playing as my closer for the Jays AA affiliate, and I give up a solo jack, I feel that it was my mistake, I should have never left that slider hanging on 2-2. My only complaint is that hitting seems to difficult at the medium and higher difficulty levels. I don't know if that is just due to my inexperience with the game, or if it is an actual problem

Neverwinter is by far one of the best MMO's I've played in 3 years. It is still in open-beta and the classes aren't really finished (more about that later), but whow, what a fun and balanced game it is. The game you can compare it to the most is probably Guild Wars 2, which I found had a really shitty PvP system and got boring pretty quick, especially post-level 80.

About the game:

The scenario is really classical: you come out of nowhere and save the fucking world. But the lore is the one of Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, and all the other games around this so if you like them you shouldn't have a problem with it.

The gameplay feels very MOBA-like. You can see mobs preparing big skills by the red zones they make like in League of Legends. This gives you time to block/dodge. It adds a lot the the "activeness" of the gameplay.

It isn't open-world. You basically have a big city, and a lot of big zones to teleport to. Some people may like it, some people may less. I like it personally, it's not a problem at all.

There are dungeons and skirmishes. Dungeons are long (30 to 45 min) quests where you fuck everything up, solve (pretty easy) puzzles, and finally beat a big big bad guy to get some big loot. You are matchmade to make a team of 5 for the dungeon, and in my opinion that is really great. No need to spam chat (LFP 20 CLERIC INVITE ME PLZZZ) and it goes fast enough. The game also tries to make a heterogene group (1 of each class). Most of the time I play with one of each class, it can happen that there are two mages, or two guardians, etc.

Skirmishes are faster quests that ask you to defend or rush something, and beat the crap out of everybody. They are easier than dungeons but also gives less loot. You are also matchmade like for dungeons.

There is a pretty good PvP. The only mode I've played until now is Domination, where there are 3 points to capture and to hold to gain points. First team (of five people) at 1000 points wins. (Think of LoL's Dominion if you know what that is)

It feels very very balanced. I don't know if it's just me but I don't even want to rage on this game. (and I rage a whole lot normally. PvP is fun and rewarding. And that's what I want.

There are quest zones where you can do classic quests to level up. It's way better to quest than to monsterbash on this game, because quests give a whole lot of experience. There are also quests directly related to your race, and if you actually take time to read the dialogue, they are pretty friggin interesting.

And, last but not least, the Foundry. Basically, make your own quest. This is awesome. No. This is more than awesome. But it's hard to use. So I'm waiting for a guide to come out so I can make my own caves full of dwarves and make you quest through my dwarf city to find the goblin evil. Remember my name, you'll see it someday. If I ever get a hang of the editor. The editor looks limitless, but I might be biased because I'm lost. Every Foundry quest you play can be rated, gives experience and drop, like every other quest.

About the classes:

So basically there are 5 classes, something like 8 races (and there are dwarves! yay!), but new classes and races are going to be added (Hunter is next AFAIK). Here's a quick overview of each of them:

1. Guardian Fighter

The class I've been playing until now (level 34 and going!). Extremely fun to play with my mate who's a Mage. I'm a dwarf naturally, because dwarves are manly. Guardian Fighters are the tanks of this game and can use a shield to block most incoming attacks in front of you (based on a dice roll that uses your and your enemies' stats). The shield can be used by holding shift so it makes for a very active and reactive playing. I'm useful everywhere, with taunts, stuns, etc. A classical but effective class.

2. Control Wizard

The class my friend is playing, and we make a very good team. He can freeze enemies to death, deal enormous amounts of damage, and can throw them all in the air at once. It's a fun class to play if you love seeing high numbers pop up on your screen.

3. Devoted Cleric

That's where I'm happy to see a huge difference with Guild Wars 2, a REAL healer! Thank god. Nothing too fancy about this one, but I haven't seen a lot of it yet. I just know it has nice crowd controls, massive heals but kinda lacks in self-heals (hey, that's why the tank's there anyway!)

4. Trickster Rogue

Can go completely invisible, has high movement, and does a lot of damage! Can be your best friends and your worse enemies in PvP, but look really fun to play. It's apparently very based on combos, too.

5. Great Weapon Fighter

The least played class but the most classical. You just rush in, get your big sword out, and kill everything that moves. Can't say too much about the use in PvP, I just know most of them use their movement speed buff to rush your capture points. I hate them. Really. Shouldn't be a reason to not play them though.

Things that should, and I hope will, get better

The professions. You can hire people to make armor for you, but right now it is very limited. You can only make the 4 types of armor but not weapons or food or anything. There's also a profession called Leadership which is only useful to get experience, ah well.

The classes post-30. This will get better, but right now you can only choose 1 class path(paragon) out of three (I think.) I really hope I'll get a free respec token when the new "branches" come out, but we'll see.

More foundry! Seriously, the possibilities are so huge, I really hope they add more and more elements to use, and for free (oh, who am I kidding...)

The experience balance. Right now I'm always doing quests that are higher level than me, and I drop things that are higher level than me. It's weird since I've done every quest possible. I hope more quests will be added per zone, or more zones will be added so that everything goes smoother.

Things that you may not like but that didn't annoy me

Lockboxes. Basically crates like TF2. Buy keys for about 2 euros and MAYBE get some super rare shit.

Lack of differences in armor and weapon skins. They don't all look the same, but the differences are hard to see. Most of the time as a guardian you have a sword even if I had an axe at one moment, and my armor hasn't changed too much.

Lack of slots in the bank. You have like 12 slots for free. Yea that's not enough.

The graphics. I personally think the game is pretty gorgeous, but it kinda feels like 2008 graphics. That depends on your tastes I guess. Oh but there's motherfucking PhysX.

You have limited slots to put your skills on. Basically, 2 "autoattack" slots, 2 "big ultimate" skill slots, 3 "attack you can only use when you aim at an enemy" slots, 2 "passive" slots, and one "special" slot that is bound to tab and that depends on your class. It's not a lot and it means you'll have to change your skills between PvE and PvP but it's enough imo. That's for you to see.

Other things

I think this game can become really great and I hope it will. Neverwinter really has a lot of potential.

Anyway if you want to play with me, join the Dragon shard and search for Munry, I'll be there.

I hope my english is understandable, and I'm here to answer ever question.

The action combat and the Foundry are what makes this game for me. There are some really well made user created quests with interesting stories and writing. Some are cheap farming quests and pit battles but they still manage to be fun due to the great combat system. If you're on Mindflayer, PM me and I'll add you.

Neverwinter has a level editor called 'The Foundry'. It allows players to create campaigns, dungeons, and questlines which can be played by other players. Featured custom Quests and Dungeons are integrated into the overworld (some NPC's will inform you about the quest), or they are otherwise brought up through a menu in-game. I haven't used it extensively so I can't say if it is as powerful as say, Aurora from Neverwinter Nights, but it does seem to give the user a lot of power from the quests I've played made from it.

This whole Bioshock Infinite thingy has left me intrigued with the series, so I decided to get Bioshock, Bioshock 2, and Bioshock Infinite and play them subsequently. Have yet to play Infinite, but I loved Bioshock and I'm loving Bioshock 2.

Bioshock has a simply marvelous story and fantastic mood. You really feel like you're going insane at certain points. I decided to move through it slowly instead of running, sort of like I would while playing Amnesia, and I had an absolute blast running through it. Not to mention the Little Sisters. These things are terrifying, yet so adorable.

Bioshock 2 has way better gameplay, though it lacks a bit on the madness. I love the introduction of Big Sisters, which are some seriously terrifying enemies, and the story is almost just as good, if not just as good, as the first one.

In both the games I have had an excellent time, difficultywise. I always start a game on medium difficulty, since I hate having an easy time, but also hate being stuck the same place for too long, and I had just the right amount of tough encounters (especially the Big Sisters) and fun battles.

I also loved both of the first two games but I'm curious if you felt the same way I did about BS2. I felt that the objectives were starting to mostly end up being like "get 5 of these items" and lacked variety.

I've been playing Bioshock 2 as well. When it came out I wrote it off as merely a soulless cash-in based on the first's success. I picked it up for $5 on Steam, I've nearly finished it, and I have to say I've had to backpedal on my initial assessment quite a bit. Obviously it lacks the originality of it's predecessor, but the combat feels a lot more solid and frantic. Playing as a Big Daddy seemed like a dumb novelty at first but begins to play well in to the story. There are some genuinely memorable moments throughout the game, too. Game objectives seem to devolve in to fetch quests and checklists near the end, but it felt like the gameplay was intentionally taking a back seat to the storytelling by that point. Overall I've been pleasantly surprised. Beyond that, I just have a few gripes about the PC release: No controller support, GFWL frustrations, some crashing issues and a poor FOV that feels perpetually zoomed-in.

A few months before Mass Effect 3 came out, I tried picking up Mass Effect for the first time. Unfortunately, it was at a time when I was the absolute worst at shooters and did not have the time to listen to hours of dialogue and lore, so I gave up as soon as I got to the Citadel. Three days ago, I woke up with the overwhelming urge to play something immersive, so I picked it up again. And holy shit did I ever get immersed.

After installing a hires texture mod, I played ME1 that entire day, stopping only to sleep, and played until I finished it the next day. I spent a long time listening to every entry in the codex, doing all the side missions, and talking to every crew member after every mission. And it was unbelievably fun. I got so caught up in the story. I loved how it was a linear game while still being relatively open-world. I loved watching my Femshep's relationships with the other crew members grow. I loved the Citadel. I loved the Normandy. I loved being forced to make tough decisions, or making Renegade decisions because I thought it was the right thing to do. I loved how my choices affected everyone and everything, even if the effect was as minor as a change in dialogue.

But there was a lot that I didn't love. The combat-pausing mechanic was awkward and interrupted the flow. The menus were obviously made for consoles - no rearranging of equipment; the dialogue wheel. There were a couple glitches like my weapons not cooling down and being stuck in elevators (I later found out how to fix these, though). Elevators! Talk about Elevator Simulator 2007, although the long rides were redeemed by the conversation between my companions and the news bulletins. Also, the main quest was way too short and there were a few instances where I continued on without realizing that I couldn't go back and accomplish things that I'd missed. The Mako segments weren't that bad, but the Mako itself handled badly. The equipment screen was badly organized and it took me a long time to sort through everyone's equipment after every few missions. Lastly, the final boss fight was a bit of a let-down. Oh, and it felt a lot like KotOR minus the lightsabers, but that's neither here nor there.

So after finishing ME1 (although I definitely plan on returning to it later on), I immediately started Mass Effect 2. And as fantastic as it is, I feel like for everything it does better than ME1, it does something worse. Let's list everything it does well: varied camera angles during dialogue; less annoying combat; no need to sort through equipment all day long; better Normandy; more companion options; more romance options (I'vealwayslovedJokerbutGarruswilldo); quick load times; no long-ass elevator rides; more interesting and varied settings; frequent autosaves (although this has bitten me in the ass a few times); Joker's commentary on new members.

The worst thing about ME2 is that so much of it was badly ported to PC. There are no hotkeys for your journal/codex/squad. The keybindings in menus are completely arbitrary - why can't I double click something or hit enter, and why can't I use WASD to navigate menus? The planet scanning takes forever, but it's not so bad with the scan upgrade. Apart from this - the Citadel is broken up rather than being one big space to explore, which bums me out. The story is not nearly as engaging as ME1's. Shep's reunions with everyone (except for one) were a letdown. The Paragon/Renegade QTEs are pretty annoying since I usually reach for a drink during cutscenes/dialogue. Also, the ability to dance at clubs is completely ridiculous... but I appreciate it nonetheless.

So all in all, I really don't know which game I like better. I love the story and world of ME1, but I feel like the gameplay and overall darker tone of ME2 is better (the fact that people actually say fuck is wonderful). I'm tentatively looking forward to playing ME3 since I heard that the DLC makes up for a lot of the issues people had with it, as well as provides a lot of fanservice.

I'm in the process of replaying the Mass Effect games (minus 3, since I hadn't gotten around to it yet) and have to agree with most of what you've said there.

One thing that struck me going through it a second time was that I think Mass Effect 2 was, in some ways, a better game that I initially gave it credit for, but also flawed in other ways I hadn't noticed the first time.

I mean, I enjoyed playing it the first time then afterwards suddenly realized that, wait a second, there was like...no story. WTF? Well, compared to the first one which I felt was extremely well-written.

The second time through, I dunno, I guess knowing what I was in for and trying to view it through the lens of it being a character study rather than the epic quest that the first one was made it seems a little better. Perhaps the first time I wasn't paying enough attention through the loyalty missions.

Firewalker? Blah. I didn't miss the Mako at all and a check-point race? In Mass Effect? Seriously?!?

Overlord was pretty good, except for the bloody driving, specifically the whole bit with the lava which I think still would've been irritating even if it wasn't so damn buggy. That said, I did like the story.

As cheesy as I felt it was to shoe-horn in a Film Noir side story to Mass Effect, I loooooved Lair of the Shadow Broker.

I've been playing X3: Albion Prelude. It's a space trading and combat simulator much like Freelancer or a single-player version of EVE Online.

What appeals to me the most about it is how the gameplay changes as you advance. Its completely sandbox, so everybody's experience is different, but typically you start out in a small fighter and scrape by performing small missions: escorts, thwarting pirate attacks, etc.

At some point you acquire more than one ship and can give it orders. AI controlled ships can do nearly anything the player can: run patrols, defend bases, even fully autonomous trading, provided you purchase expensive trade software.

As you grow in wealth and number of ships, the game transforms from a twitch first-person flyer to a highly complex management sim and strategy game. You can assemble a private military fleet and take over a sector, build an empire of industrial complexes and supply lines, become a feared pirate that captures capital ships, anything you can dream up.

It is the only game I know that allows for this kind of progression and in my opinion, the best game that few people have heard of. It has it's share of bugs and a steep learning curve, but contains mind-boggly many possibilities for engaging play.

A sequel that may be superior is slated to come out later this year and I think it's going to be a hit.

I absolutely loved human revolution, and now I have finally got round to playing the DLC.
Getting to delve back into the world, with all it's spot-on cyberpunk atmosphere, has been great, it is guilty of one of my gaming pet hates: backtracking.

Despite the odd frustration, I think it is a well made game that works to fix some of the flaws of the original. P.s. I love the sped up character progression.

Bastion

The combination of a beautiful aesthetic and exposition via the reactive narrator is a winner in my book. The game had been sitting in my library since it last went on sale, and I now regret taking so long to get into it.

The music is fitting and the combat is surprisingly deep. When you die, it never feels unfair.

I've been playing Blur. It's basically Mario Kart and Project Gotham Racing thrown into one game. It uses similar powerups-like a shunt is basically a red shell-but the game still feels different. Rather than being in little karts you can be in an Audi R8 or Ford F100. The game feels much more intense than Mario Kart and is as equally as infuriating. The game was longer than I expected, but that was fine. I'll definitely be doing a replay of it soon.

Now, I liked Far Cry 3. It was a fun game, but the lead character was an unlikable cunt and they killed off the cool bad guy too soon. I enjoyed the gameplay and some of the missions were fun (particularly the flamethrower one)

Blood Dragon is more of the same, except the lead character is a cheesy action movie star type of deal, and you have fucking laser rifles. The game has a lot of humour in it, and the missions are pretty fun, but I've really been spending my time running around hunting Blood Dragons (Huge lizard beasts that shoot lasers) with my explosion gun.

I've played about 5 hours myself, and I've done I think two story missions. It's a lot of fun for the sheer ridiculousness of it, but from what I hear the story is pretty short so I don't really know if I'll be getting a long playtime out of it.

Still, for €15, it's a pretty good deal, and a fun experience. Pretty shallow b-movie parody story, kinda like just cause 2, and is funny as fuck.

Thank you for mentioning your dislike of the lead character in Far Cry 3, as I am yet to find someone irl that agrees with my opinion. He just seems like an ignorant tourist and the whole storyline involving him being 'at one' with the island and all that nonsense, it just made me cringe.

To me, that was sort of the point of the character. The fact that you were this "unlikeable cunt" makes you question your actions throughout the story. It added a possible layer of depth to an (on the surface) glorified action movie.

I've bought a new computer (3570k, 7950) and got a download code for Crysis 3. I had played Crysis & Crysis: Warhead earlier, so I wasn't really entirely sure how it'd play out or how the story had developed. Ran on very high settings 1920x1200 with slightly over 30 fps, which was a pleasant surprise.

Crysis 3

I thought the gameplay had just gotten worse. I'm not entirely sure why they ditched the four different suit modes (armor, cloak, speed, strength), as it worked just fine previously. Now the speed&stength modes are integrated to the suit, so they're on all the time. This coupled with the simplified level design makes it all so much less interesting. While the first Crysis's non-alien levels weren't very expansive, they still gave the player some options: do you want to approach from the sea, do you rush in from the front with a vehicle, do you sneak behind and possibly blow up the explosives, or perhaps just run or sneak past everyone and such. It's still a tube, but at least the tube is several hundred meters wide. In Crysis 3, the options are 1) sneak 2) shoot 3) the combination of those two in relatively narrow levels, where you may be given just a big storage room or three interconnected 10m wide tubes that all end up in the same place.

I'll admit, I didn't play C3 on the hardest setting (3rd hardest I believe), but some things seemed just overpowered. The bow allows you to fire while cloaked without the risk of uncloaking, so you can just pick up enemies one by own while retreading behind a wall every now and then to wait for your energy to recover, which doesn't really make for every exciting action. Hacking was too powerful too, as you could just cloak, hack a turret, and the turret would destroy half the enemy base. The enemy AI had gotten better, but once again the humans were the most interesting enemies and the aliens just weren't. Some of the segments of wandering through long grass while fast-moving aliens were circling you were tense, but other than that aliens just felt like they had more HP and more powerful weapons and were generally best to just sneak past.

It's not all worse though, the characters have turned from unlikeable to rather banal. Psycho became just a hardass with a British accent, which is preferable to Crysis's Psycho who mostly complained and acted like he had a stick up his arse. The stunning facial animations were almost lifelike and I spent the first 10 minutes collecting my jaw from the floor. I'm not going to spoil the ending, but despite its over-the-topness it inspired me to do another walkthrough of the first Crysises.

Crysis

And yes, finally I could run Crysis on the highest settings, full HD, 60 fps. Ever since installing Crysis back in 2007 on my brand new computer with E6750 and 8800 GTS, I had dreamt of this day. It certainly still is a pretty game, but second to Crysis 3 because of the rather inconsistent texture quality. Man, those rock textures were pretty smudgy, I thought I'd never get to complain about this.

I always thought Crysis had solid gameplay for the most part and could stand on its own independent of graphics, and after the playthrough I still agree with that thought. There's enough variety in the gameplay thanks to the suit modes, weapons and vehicles, and toying with the poorish human AI and destructible buildings doesn't get old quick. I would hunt every single enemy down because I found it amusing time after time. Cloak behind a group of enemies, grab one with strength mode, throw him at others, run away in speed mode, jump on a roof in strength mode, laugh at the confused Koreans. I can't remember what the video is called but you can find a great Crysis player toying around with the enemies, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Crysis is great around halfway through, until you venture to a mine for the first time. That's when it starts limiting the player's freedom greatly, and it's not that pleasant to play. Venturing deeper and deeper inside the mine is tense at first but soon becomes rather tedious. Then aliens happen and the game has tossed away the best part about it, and it becomes a bit of a chore to finish.

Crysis: Warhead

Right after I decided to try Crysis: Warhead, and holy hell, I certainly didn't remember it to be this bad. The first level or so is still great with wide but linear levels, villages and dumb Koreans. However, this game relies more on scripted setpieces and boring, meaningless cutscenes, and it just doesn't work. As an example with a very minor spoiler, there's a cutscene where Psycho (your character) and your friend sneak behind an enemy, knock him out and your friend almost executes him but after slaughtering tons of Koreans Psycho stops him and says "There are some rules I do follow", because the Korean is unarmed. I'm guessing they're trying to give Psycho some character and it just fails spectacularly. I'm guessing it's mostly because of the awkward animations and pauses. Seriously, it feels like a fan project. Watch for yourself.

I'm guessing the developers decided to make Crysis with a twist and it falls short. It has so much less of the things I liked about Crysis and so much more of the things I didn't. Not enough Korean villages and too many chases in different vehicles. I might play Crysis again someday, I certainly won't be doing that with Crysis: Warhead.

Since we're talking about video games I guess I have to summarise my thoughs in the form of a grade.

Crysis 3, it's polished and slick with high production values and simplified gameplay, 6/10.

Crysis, still a solid game half-way through, buggy AI and boring aliens drag it down a bit, 7/10

Crysis: Warhead, feels more like a fan project with neither the level design nor the production values to make it memorable, 4/10

I haven't played Crysis 2, and if it's more of Crysis 3, I don't think I can be arsed to.

Fable: The Lost Chapters
I've beaten Fable 1 twice on Xbox, Fable TLC another two times on Xbox, once on PC, and I'm about to finish it again. Needless to say, I think it's a great game.

The story itself is great, especially when compared to Fable II and Fable III. The world itself has its own history, and it's completely optional to explore. There's tons of books you can read to learn more about the world of Albion. The main campaign has plot twists, and sad moments. It has a good/evil choice system which really boosts the immersion. When I'm playing an evil character, I truly feel like a dark lord. When you're good, though, you feel like some sort of liberator, there for people that probably don't deserve a hero like you.

The humour in the original Fable was pretty good, and it's rather strengthened by the additions in Fable TLC. The Bordello, the chicken hat, and all the subtle jokes like Cpn Jack Sparrow's tomb stone all make for a nice humorous experience.

The gameplay itself is rather simple. You have a sword, a bow, and spells. You have to unholster the bows or swords to use them, and you can use spells whenever, even if you already have something unholstered. Sword play is interesting. With the sword, you can block attacks, and, if you hit an opponent that's blocking, you get the option to do a Flourish, which breaks the enemy's block and damages him, and usually knocking him to the ground. The spells are a very important factor in the game. You could play the game without them, but the benefits they give you are stellar. Assassin's rush, for example, lets you teleport behind an enemy, which makes enemies blocking utterly useless. My only complaint is that it's rather easy. I'm an experienced player, but I haven't died once in my current playthrough. I haven't used any resurrection phials either (they allow you to come back to life. When you don't have any more and you die, you have to reload a save).

An important factor to consider is that it's an older title. Fable 1 was released in 2004, and TLC was released in 2005. I personally think the graphics are good, but if you're the type of person that doesn't like that kind of stuff, then you might want to check some videos out before you make a purchase.

TL;DNR/Conclusion: Fable TLC is a must-play for fans of the original, or anyone that can enjoy a 3rd person action RPG.

-- I had been playing throughout closed beta, but I thought I would take the opportunity to hop on during this weekend's open beta festivities. It's been an absolute blast so far. The gameplay has improved throughout beta and is starting to really shine as a great Marvel-themed ARPG. I've been sampling a wide variety of characters but Black Widow is really standing out as an extremely fun character. Her gameplay is so involving and demanding of the player; instead of just holding left click continuously, you're constantly firing guns in one direction while throwing punches'n'kicks in the other. Not to mention the grenades. Oh, the grenades ... so much fun.

Can't wait for the upcoming endgame content patch, and the full launch on June 4th.

Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons. These games are under appreciated. The dungeons are better than most in the series. After having recently beaten all the Zelda games before OoS and OoA the dungeons seem much bigger and spread out. They require a lot more thinking. The items are pretty unique too. The main game mechanics of changing seasons and time are used very well and make the game pretty unique. Trading secrets between games makes each play through different enough from the last to keep it interesting. I think the sense of exploration from MM, Zelda, LttP and LA are missing though and the game is much too linear. Once you receive an item it is blatantly obvious where you're supposed to go next. OoA's map seems much smaller too.

Witcher 2 - I bought it on a steam summer sale last summer, but had a laptop that failed recently. Built a brand new computer and I can play it on almost full settings (no uber sampling) and it looks incredible. When I build my HT system with dolby digital live I am sure it will sound amazing as well. I'm a big rpg fan and it is definitely one of the best rpgs ever made. I personally think the combat mechanics in that game is second to none.

I got around to Max Payne 3. When it came out, I couldn't stand it. It yanked the controls out of my hands way too often, it didn't feel noir and the story was meh. The shooting was fine but not enough to carry me through hours of cutscenes.

Now that I am back with the mindset of wanting to witness this story fold out, it's a hell of a game. Yes, the yanking of controls is still a bit annoying but it's made up by Max's narration. And yes, this is very much noir, I can't see why some people would say it wasn't but it sure as hell is. You've got your drunken, brooding protagonist, you've got a city full of sin and poverty, you've got mystery, human drama, betrayals. The only problem that conflicts with the theme is just how much shooting and killing Max does but that problem of narrative dissonance is so common in games that I'm willing to forgive it.

It's just a well told story, not the most original nor the most exciting but Max is a likable protagonist and that's what matters. I'm almost finished through it and if GTA V takes some cues from this game regarding the shooting, V will be hellova game.

Guild Wars 2 - I loved GW1 and I love GW2 so far. There's almost too much to do in this game, and I'm legitimately having fun. Other MMOs aren't fun anymore because I can see past the systems and realize that they're creating a false sense of achievement that's supposed to make me feel like I'm having fun. PvP is kind of disappointing, but they've made huge additions to it and I'm hoping to see them revamp it so I can get into it. Now that my classes are over, I can get back to really playing this game. I hear the final dungeon isn't good to farm but is really one of the funnest experiences in the game, so I'm looking forward to that.

Darksiders - I bought this game from the Humble Bundle and at first I thought it was very okay, plus if you use a mouse and keyboard it's awful because this is almost as bad a port as GTA IV. But one night I had to stay up the whole night doing homework, and I had a couple hours between when I finished and my first class, so I just hooked up an Xbox controller to my PC and went at it. Extremely brutal, extremely entertaining, extremely satisfying. The names and story are very generic. It's exactly what you'd expect. And I love it for that. 9:37 hours in, which is ~60% through the game.

The Witcher - I had a really tough time getting into this game. I still don't like the combat mechanics at all but the story is interesting and I actually give a shit about the characters. Character development is done mind blowingly poorly in almost every video game, so this was a definite plus for me and enough to keep me invested. Unfortunately, it seems like this game is very long, and I don't have that much time to play. To clarify, I'm playing on a laptop so I can't play more than an hour or two per day, so going through a normal length game is already taxing as it is.

I've been playing Loadout, a create-your-own-gun-then-kill-people-with-it sorta game. The animation style is really fluid and the controls just feel so natural. The customization is absolutely amazing, having nearly a hundred different options and combination to create unique guns. The game is currently in beta but you can definitely sign up because they are looking for more testers. go check it out!!!!

It took a couple of tries to get in to it but I have been slowly starting to love Metro 2033. At first I was kind of turned off by the mediocre shooting mechanics, my biggest complaint being that every gun sounds too weak. You would think that shooting a gun in a crowded tunnel would be deafening. I also got stuck without any air filters on the surface at one point, making me have to restart the whole level, which made me frustrated enough to not play the game for a few days.

But after I looked past that, I started really enjoying it. The atmosphere is the games biggest strength. It is incredible. I also love the design of the weapons, especially some of the pneumatic ones. The story has been great too, though I have been a sucker for post-apocalyptic games ever since Fallout 3 got me hooked on gaming. I haven't finished 2033 yet but it's already got me excited for Metro: Last Light.

This game is vast. 20 hours in on a single city and I have only just started expanding my city. It is so easy to just lose yourself in this game and realize you just spent an hour optimizing traffic flow on an intersection. The game is not perfect and has some annoying stuff, such as constantly adjusting ticket prices on the fastest speed, but there's a lot of content.

Haven't even gotten around to using the map editor yet, and the game should soon have a Steam workshop too.

Bully: Scholarship Edition

Finally got it in the Rockstar sale last weekend and have been enjoying it immensely. The graphics are a bit dated and seem a little inconsistent (especially the shadows), but the gameplay is a lot of fun. Also, a fair part of the mini-games is actually enjoyable, and ConSumo is awesome. 12 hours in and despite trying to play through it rather quickly, I am nowhere near finished yet.

GTA IV The Lost and Damned

A good story and some awesome new stuff, such as bike racing with a baseball bat make it a lot of fun. Also, some of the new guns are pretty cool. The story seems fairly long for a DLC, or maybe that's just because of the GTA style of wasting time.

It is like a whole new game. I just love every thing they put into it. Naval bombardment, port siege battles, new units, the setting: Boshin War and the modernization mechanic and the whole thing feels super polished. I believe that this is the best Total War ever made.

But one thing that I very much dislike is that instead of explaining and giving information about different technologies they opted instead to a poetic style of writing.

For example: Seclusion. The picture that symbolizes the technology consists of a Torri with a stop hand and the small description says: "Retire from the world, and contemplate truth"

Oh they must mean secularization of Japan? It gives +2 in happiness? What? Are the people supposed to be happy with the removal of religion from the government? What does the description say:

"The secret spring, the blossom comes at it will, beholder ignore. Behind closed doors, the farmer is the master in his own home. He need not care that the neighbours think him old fashioned, for they cannot see or understand his respect for tradition. His family will not learn uncouth ways, because he decides what and who crosses his threshold. Within his walls, the old harmony is maintained."

Wait so this is not about religion? Or is it about tradition and that they can do what they want in their own home? What?

I do not only come for enjoyment of the Total War series but I also come to learn. Shogun 2 Vanilla was so much better since it actually described what the different technologies did and what impact they had.

But other than that I really love Fall of the Samurai and I can get an Empire 2: Total War with these mechanics and this polish, then I can die a happy man.

I just picked up League of Legends (I know, I'm late to the party). It is incredibly addictive; I can definitely see how it is one of the most popular games in the world. However, probably the best part about it is playing with friends; being able to Skype with my friends (who are actually good at the game) makes it so much more fun for me.

Its absolutely a bunch of fun, but you dont learn anything about how the game actually works and you can learn some bad habits. Also you cant learn by mimicking other people because they wont be doing stuff that makes sense. I think league gets to be a lot more fun once you learn how to play it and getting involved in ARAM just slows down the learning process.

Similar vein, I just picked up DotA 2. I'm in way over my head, but I'm better than a few people I've played bot matches with. I only know how to play like 3 heroes though, and don't know when to use them, so I'm afraid to just jump into a match vs other people.

Edit: just started playing pub matches vs other players. Lost all games that I tried to play support. Won both games where I played a pubstomp ganker (Night Stalker/Nyx). Every game I tried to play pure support, my carry ran off or died trying to gank early game.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the endings of the first two games and the game play of all three games I was extremely disappointed with the ending of number 3. I was considering replaying the whole three games with a walk through from start to finish and predetermining what choices I was going to make to have the most positive effect on the end sequences.

I decided against that option after seeing the end sequence of the trilogy. I may still play through 1 and 2 but I doubt I will ever play 3 again, as a matter of fact I don't want to see the other end sequence of 3 after witnessing the first one.

Did you download the Extended Cut DLC? It's free - and made after masses of people complained about the awful ending (it adds more about what happened next and, I believe (I failed to achieve it) has the option for the survival of Shepard - something I missed because my final score was a little too low. I just finished the trilogy and really enjoyed it, and am replaying through ME1 now after learning just how many people I didn't need to lose!

EC swaps some things around to make more sense and adds an additional cutscene and the post-ending stuff. IMO it's still kind of a mediocre ending but at least it gives a little more closure. The Citadel DLC is my head canon ending though.

Minecraft (PC). This is going to end up being one of those classic games for me, where I turn when I am bored of the rest. I play on a server with a couple other folks and we all just build and build and build, sort of trying to outdo each other.

Fire Emblem Awakenings (3DS). I just started this one. I enjoy the gameplay but boy is there a lot of movie/story/exposition going on. I'm hoping that the later levels allow you to spend more time strategizing and, well, playing the game. I skip most of the movies because they just go on and on.

dialogue is pretty good in the game. I guess there's a lot but it comes with the genre/franchise. You will get more options soon in the game as you will be able to access a prep menu before battles and choose equipment, team, positioning on the map. and also move freely on the overworld map

It's really interesting. I love the effect I can have on the story. It's like a movie where you only occasionally have to really do something. Even though a lot of tasks are really simple (brushing teeth, fetching a glass of water), they make you way more invested in the characters when more serious stuff happens.

The ARI sunglasses the FBI guy has are way too cool. Investigating that crime scene is really easy thanks to the techy glasses, but the real challenge is figuring out the right choices to make as each character. What's even more awesome, it's hard to know if you've made a wrong decision, but regardless, you're stuck with it until the story's over.

I've tried to get into this game countless times. In this playthrough I am around 14 hours in, but have run out of things to do. I could the main questline, but i want to save it till I am a higher level (I'm 14 atm). The game really failed to capture me in the way that New Vegas did.

Oddly enough, I had the same issue with Oblivion and Skyrim. I have almost 300 hours in Skyrim, but ran out of things to do very quickly in Oblivion.

I'm going to drop it for a bit to restart and finish Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Hopefully when I return I can find some stuff to do.

I've been playing Viking: Battle for Asgard. I know, I know. I picked it up on the Steam sale last week for less than the price of a decent beer. I figured even if it was as disappointing and dull as everyone said it was, it couldn't be worth less than four dollars.

The game was made by Creative Assembly, those folks who make the Total War games. It was marketed as a kind of army-building God of War-style game, as many other developers were hopping aboard the Kratos train in that period. It ended up being rather poorly received, and more or less abandoned as a franchise. Which is a shame, really. There's a lot of potential here and pretty neat ideas that got lost in the last decade or so of gaming.

It is not a God of War game, nor should it be regarded as such. It is a early-PS2-era-style Viking Commando game. It has a structure that reminds me of Black and White than Total War. Going from open-world-ish explorable islands wherein the player slowly takes pieces of territory and important resources back from the enemy, before mounting large assaults on cities or castles.

The gameplay has more in common with Enclave and Rune than God of War. The combat isn't terribly flashy, instead relying on simple combos of light and hard hits - though it can be gratuitous with the gore - and this more subdued style honestly gives it a bit of extra viciousness. Compared to, say, Darksiders or Devil May Cry, the connections with enemies actually have heft and meaning instead of letting opponents just get juggled like XP-pinatas. Speaking of XP, there's a neat little touch that enemies don't actually drop XP. They just charge up your magic meter. You use money to buy upgrades, and enemies rarely drop money. This means that most foes are simply opposition to be dealt with in accordance to your own objectives, not rewards to be reaped.

Skarin - the somewhat ridiculous name for the potentially-insane viking protagonist - is really unrelenting and brutal at times, but is not a demigod or a superhero. He's just a really talented murderviking that happens to have a bit of magic from Freya but mostly doesn't use it. For example, if Skarin's too close to an enemy, his attacks change from large swings to smaller hilt-bashes and punches to deal with the folks that are right up in his face. A nice touch that reinforces the intimacy of the combat instead of overblown finishers and combos.

Not all good things though - there's a few ways to get kind of stunlocked, and that gets a bit old, and there's certain strategies for combat that start becoming overwhelmingly "better". Also, there's the occasional annoying slow-motion finishing-move bit. At least there's not a quick-time event for the normal enemies. Such is the way of action games, I suppose.

Another example of the somewhat odd way that this game does things: there's stealth sections. Well, every time you come near enemies, Skarin drops to a crouch and lets you start stealth-killing enemies until they become largely aware of the murderous viking batman among them. The "stealth sections" I referred to are the objectives that lie inside of heavily-fortified bases and are really difficult to assault head-on - sabotage, subterfuge, assassination. These stealth sections are not binary pass-fail, nor is the stealth even mandatory. They're just smarter when done stealthily, because the enemies are aggressive and difficult when they've got a lot of numbers.

Despite the chagrin that most people hold for stealth in non-stealth games, these actually work surprisingly well. Moreover, All of the sulking about before a big fight gives you a chance to really get a lay of the land.

Then the larger fights happen. Once the admittedly useless and barely-navigable map allows you to activate them, big assaults on objectives form a means of making more tangible progress. Usually there's prerequisites, like having freed or gathered enough forces, or sabotaged certain parts of the enemy army, or summoned a dragon. Sometimes there are dragons. It's not quite as cool as it sounds, and you really only get to direct them as artillery instead of seeing them stomp around the battlefield all that much. Maybe just not yet. Still, the fights only further the whole Viking Commando schtick, where two big armies clash and you run around the battle taking down certain objectives or killing shamans or some such.

All this put together gives it a strange anachronistic aspect - it feels like the an artifact of another era. Like it should have been published in 2003 instead of 2008. The atmosphere, graphical style, combat oddities, and strange combination of open-world exploration, stealth, non-linear objectives, and larger Dynasty Warriors-esque battles all combine to something that really can't be categorized by today's standards.

I haven't gotten far enough to see if they do anything really interesting with the mythos or characters, but there's always potential for that. I have, however, started to get far enough that the repetitiveness is starting to bleed through. Much like the first Assassin's Creed game, there's not a lot of variety in activity. The slew of unnecessary quick-time events that plagued that era of game development is embarrassingly present. There's not a great balance of powers - the ice enhancement far outstrips the others in terms of usefulness. Still, I'm certainly interested enough to keep playing. I'll have to see what kind of thoughts I develop over the rest of the game. Maybe it'll get much better or much worse. Only time will tell.

So yeah. The game's flaw-riddled, yes. But I think it really got marketed wrong and misunderstood as to what it offered when it was released. I'm certainly getting way more than four dollars of enjoyment out of it. The port isn't terrible, but beware the map. Its awkward as hell to navigate on a keyboard. If a controller is available instead, use that. Or just play it on a console in the first place.

I bought it a year ago, and my friends were always telling me to play it, but I never did. I finally decided to try it this Thursday, and I'm finding it slightly addicting. I've spent about 10 hours on it the last two days and built up an army of about 40 troops and joined the Mongols of the game (Kerghit I think?). I haven't had this much fun with a game in a long time, it's like Age of Empires II but in the form of an RPG.

Walking Dead by Telltale Games
soo i just beat episode 5 (the final episode) last night... and its one of those games that stays on your mind long after the credits have stopped rolling. I don't even remember being that invested in characters like i was in that game. I beat Bioshock infinite a couple weeks ago and.. it makes me queasy to say this, but i honestly liked a point and click game more. Not saying BI is bad by any means, so far my favorite game of 2013, but in my personal opinion, walking dead blew it out of the water.

I also love the relationship between Lee and Clementine. It felt so real and i actually based most of my decsisions in the game around her. I've never done that in a game before. The interactive dialogue parts, aka 90% of the game, is a prime example of how that needed to be done, and it worked flawlessly.

One gripe i have with the game is that whenever something crazy was about to happen in episode 2 and 3, the game would kinda stutter and pause like it was loading the setpiece without a loading screen. i played it on a disc and it could have been a smudge or something but it kind of took e out of the experience for a bit. not a big deal but still kind of annoying. Now i realize why this game won so many GOTY awards.

I'd never seen the show or watched the comic, and I absolutely loved it. It was actually my top game of last year. I have friends who have noticed little references to the other media, but for the most part it's completely standalone.

No you do not have to watch the show or read the comic books. Although if you were open to recommendations, i would recommend reading the comics for sure. Great series. And if you can't get enough of zombies you should watch the tv show too, its pretty good.

The Walking Dead by telltale has a completely different story with different characters. (and in my honest opnion, i liked this story better then the comics and the show, which is definitely saying something!)

I got this in the AMD bundle that comes with 7xxx video cards. They were surprisingly prompt with emailing the code. On their blog it said, starting May 1st, they'll email all the bundle owners and I got it that day sometime in the afternoon. I was expecting a slower rollout over a few days/week.

Anyways, it seems it has been received well for the most part in the usual major gaming outlets and also by /r/games and such. I immediately share this view. I watched a short amount of dev commentary with gameplay and got the gist of what to expect and I wasn't really disappointed. There has been some criticism that it doesn't commit fully as either serious full on 80s taking itself seriously or full out wacky self aware fun (see giant bomb quicklook), but for me that's fine. I understand most of the references and I feel that even if you don't (i.e. born later than the target demographic) it's still a blast and quite hilarious. Some may feel the one-liners and 80s theme will become repetitive and outstay its welcome but I've yet to experience that. Though being a shorter game, we don't know for sure.

For gameplay, the mechanics aside from cyberhearts luring dragons, feel almost basically the same as Far Cry 3. Basically, it's the 80s instagram filter for the vanilla game but not in a bad way at all. The 2d cutscenes are awesome. I'm only a few hours in since I didn't have much time to blast through it this week. I've heard it's only about 8 hours on average so I'll probably be able to finish it quite soon. Can't complain for the low price of free from the AMD bundle (or $15 for those you who bought it).

Because it is a smaller game (smaller map, shorter story), it has the streamlined leveling and upgrade system and I really, really like that. Far Cry 3 has the more traditional skill tree and crafting upgrade system and that's fine, but really I am loving the auto-nature of Blood Dragon where it just comes to you. For me it's tedious and done to death over many games in the exact same way (do I want to upgrade speed or health, more ammo or more damage, reload etc). Cutting this out and just making it mission rewards was a good idea.

In conclusion, I'm enjoying it more than vanilla Far Cry 3, which I've also yet to finish. If you got $15 to spare, it's a good buy. If you don't like 4th wall, cheesy dialogue and over the top silly shit, this game is not for you.

Burnout Paradise

I'd gotten this more than a year ago but never really played much of it. For some reason I got the racing game itch and redownloaded it. I like it a lot. The driving and takedowns feel good. It's a shame there's no way to get the dlc content without resorting to messing with 3rd party tools/hacks since they shut down the store.

There are just 2 complaints about the game. The 1st is lack of fast travel and the 2nd is the minimap/open route races/no course markers. No fast travel is a real pita when you want to just do an event you see on the map and it's a bitch to look up how to get there and then drive there especially when it's on the other side of the city. Even if not allowing direct fast travel to events from the map screen, it'd be nice to fast travel to unlocked gas stations, junkyards, paint/auto shops. And as for open route racing, it's pretty neat to find a better/faster way to finish the race, but I think it's kind of ridiculous you have to be watching the minimap and memorizing a route (exact turns) right when you start the race after pausing to the map screen. and then you have to watch the minimap to not miss the appropriate turns. No HUD or markers to show you're going towards the general direction of the finish. I'm not sure how hard it'd be but maybe Criterion could have inserted a dynamic marker system that helped to lead you to the finish. I mean every RPG and even sleeping dogs has a waypoint system with auto path-finding. I've literally written a simple maze-solving algorithm back in freshman year of college. It can't be that difficult or resource intensive.

Other than those two things, Burnout Paradise is great. I love unlocking new cars and just driving around. Especially whenever I find those open areas with lots of ramps and fun things scattered in the area (construction site, storage area, etc. in the map where there is just a blank area or trees/park. The open world was a double-edged sword. Driving around is a joy when you have no destination and finding all the super jumps and gate smashes is fun.

So if you're looking for a solid arcade racer, grab this when it goes on sale for $5 on amazon or steam. any non-steam purchase redeems on origin but only requires 1 time activation (though origin provides cloud saves if you launch from the client instead of a regular shortcut).

Neverwinter

This MMO went open beta last week and I'd watched a few gameplay videos with dev interviews before this so I had a vague idea of what it was about. I was excited to revisit the Forgotten Realms once again in another game. The last one I played was Dark Alliance on gamecube and ps2/xbox (that was my summer in 2004/2005). I also love reading the FR books (Drow Saga, other various series).

Jumping in game, the controls feel nice. There have been comparisons drawn to Tera combat but not quite the same heft to it. I like it better at any rate. Aside from launch day lag, I didn't really run into any problems. There's nothing particularly revolutionary that I've run into yet but this can possibly be the 1st MMO I commit to in a long time. It's enjoyable and that's enough for me. They have also been very responsive and actively fixing the servers to handle the load better. I will keep playing to see what the rest of the game has to offer.

Ragnarok Online 2

Considering the launch was a gigantic mess and I still can't run the game without problems, I have yet to actually play the game. THe original Steam download wasn't even fully patched, so following suggestions in the forums, I manually ran the client to patch it. For the 1st day, their antihack servers were down and also their registration site. Luckily I'd already registered the week before in preparation. As soon as I log in the next day or so after hoping their server load had gone down, character creation was a mess. I could select attributes and design but not see a damn thing since the character display was blank/black as was character select after I blindly put together a thief/rogue who I only could choose the voice informedly. Turns out it was a girl with short hair. and this is what greets me when I join the server. So I deleted the game and tried the standalone install. No dice. Haven't touched it since. I'll wait until I hear it's been fixed to try it again.

But I've heard terrible things from the closed beta. I played iRO back in the day around 2004/2005 with my friends and once we got bored of vanilla, we server hopped private servers to try out the different exp/drop rates and other random tweaks. They were fun summers. The gameplay is just one of the best feelings I've gotten in an MMO. From what I hear RO2 is just a straight up wow clone in quests, mobs, combat, etc. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt to see if I can enjoy it at all but I already know, it'll never come close to it's legendary predecessor.

Just started this one a bit ago and I'm only about an hour in. Super impressed with the 3D visuals, and I love the adjacent team member strategy so far. Only downside for me is that the game already seems long as hell, and I likely won't have time to finish it.

Runner 2 (Steam)

Been loving this game (and subsequently destroying Deimorz's scores - yeah I said it). The levels are amazing, but honestly the scoring system is ridiculously stupid. Still totally worth the purchase.

Robot Unicorn Attack 2 (iOS)

I hate how much I enjoy this game. Already at level 22, maxed out with everything. At what point does playing on my iPhone more than all of my other gaming devices become a problem? (Probably at that point.)

The thing I love about Runner2 (at least from what I've played of it so far, I'm only on the third world) is that it always feels like it's ramping up. Where other platformers seem to introduce everything within the first world or so, like Super Meat Boy, runner seems like it's steadily introducing a new element every other stage, yet somehow manages to keep things from feeling overwhelming. I'm curious though (as you've obviously played more than me), what is it about the scoring you find irritating? I imagine spamming the dance mechanic throughout a difficult stage for a higher score could be quite annoying, but you could be talking about something else entirely.

I've been playing Fallout New Vegas for the passed few months. Its been so long and I have almost lost interest in the game. But I'm not a quitter, I will explore every part of the Wasteland and do every mission possible until I finish the game. Even if I have to pop some adderall and pull an all nighter. If you can't tell, I'm sick of this game. Once you pass lvl 50 its just kinda boring. But its still one of those games that you no matter how much you hate it, months later you'll play the shit out of it. Its a great game, excellent story line, with mods; an awesome selection of guns and gun mods. Back to the grind.

IF you are on PC and have FO3 you should get Tale of Two Wastelands. I am going to play through 3 and then NV with the same character pretty soon and I think it will be cool to role play as someone who leaves DC for Nevada.

I picked up the Killzone Collection along with Max Payne 3 since I didn't have to play at the moment. Max Payne 3 has surpassed my expecations. Brilliant presentation with great gunplay. Maybe I'm a bit ballsy but it is slightly difficult on medium.

I started with Killzone 2 since I played Killzone back when it came out. The controls are a bit strange. It defaults with the classic "click down stick to ADS" and the FPS controls that we see today as the norm was one of the last options. For some reason I cannot get the sensitivity to be just right it stills feels strange playing it now. Graphics are great and the gameplay flows well besides the past few points I just made.

Killzone has stood the test of time. I remember playing it and being blown away by the graphics. Besides some blurry textures and shit draw distance at certain points the game looks very good. The animations are superb and weapon models look incredible. The transition was fairly smooth as I've encountered no bugs at all.

Pretty happy with my purchases in the end. Diehard fans of Max Payne 1+2 may view Max Payne 3 in the same light as me but it is still a great experience that you should all try. Killzone Collection is definitely worth picking up since the PS4 is coming out soon along with Killzone Shadow Fall so any interested in that might as well pick up the collection.

I've been playing Dark Souls. I'm sure many of you have played it already, but it's fucking brilliant. For those who haven't played it, it's a third-person (mostly) singleplayer fantasy roleplaying game in an open world.

What I like:

Difficult in a way not seen in most modern games (Think classic platformer: performing the same series of moves over and over until you perfect them, beat the level, and move on)

No "best weapon" or "best character". You do what you feel like and in the end it's just as valid as any other class/loadout. You can't ruin your character like you can in other games in similar genres.

What I don't like:

God-awful physics.

Little to no explanation as to what each of your character stats does. You have to rely on the wiki for help as to what armor you can wear and still be mobile, how much your intelligence actually scales the damage of your spells, etc. (I guess this is a characteristic of many JRPG's.)

I've only just gotten into it, and I'm definitely not close to beating it, but if you're looking for a swords and sorcery challenge, this could the game for you. Prepare to die a lot; the learning curve is pretty steep, but killing the boss at the end of each level is that much more rewarding.

Little to no explanation as to what each of your character stats does. You have to rely on the wiki for help as to what armor you can wear and still be mobile, how much your intelligence actually scales the damage of your spells, etc. (I guess this is a characteristic of many JRPG's.)

If you press Select (or whatever equivalent button you have) you get a nice Help overlay on any screen that lets you scroll over various stats and stuff to tell you exactly what it is they do. The numerical side of things is an absolute mess though, I finally had a go at a New Game+ and it's amazing how ridiculously the stats fall off.

Vitality after 50 is basically worthless (8 health per level down from 20+), Endurance stops giving stamina at 40, Attunement is quite literally worthless after 50 when you reach the maximum amount of slots. Even Strength/Dex/Intelligence/Faith scaling seems to come to an almost dead stop at 40.

I'm not quite sure why they diminish like that, it would make more sense to just cap out all of the stats at 50, souls become practically worthless after ~200 SL anyways when you can buy everything from every merchant in the game for the same amount of souls it would take to get 8 more health. I love Dark Souls, but whoever designed the way the stats scale is insane.

I've played a decent amount of Monaco this week and it has been a blast. Game is an absolute joy when playing with a good team. There is a great deal of satisfaction when fully 100%ing a level as well. Music is fantastic, wouldn't expect any different from Austin Wintory. Definitely an awesome game to pick up for 15 bucks.

My first impression of the game is that it is incredibly immersive, and a lot of that precious immersion can be credited to it's fantastic art direction. The game definitely doesn't have the highest graphical fidelity, but the small attentions to detail really sets it apart from most other western rpgs that I've played.
Depending the body type and stance you chose for your character his/her animation looks drastically different. And you feel a considerate amount of weight, inertia, and sense of impact to both your character's and enemy's movement. When you walk along a shore or inside a canyon, you can see dust, trees and grass blowing in the wind as it howls realistically. The layouts of the villages and its buildings feel realistic and lived in.
But, by far, my favorite element about the game is its dramatic day-night system. The world becomes substantially more dangerous after sundown. It reminded me of the transition from day to night in minecraft, just more traumatic. When it gets dark in Dragon's Dogma, it gets really fucking dark; so dark that you can barely make out your own character's silhouette, let alone the enemy's. So you can forget about spotting your enemies and planning ahead. Even the weaker enemy encounters become a real threat when fighting in near complete darkness. And on top of that, the roads, which provide a reliably safe passage during the day, become crawling with more imposing foes. I was always hit with an intense sense of terror and desperation every time I ventured in out at night, as I struggled my way through a dark, dense forest, battling monster and bandits while looking for any source of light that might signal a village nearby.

The only downside to the game, for me, was that the sense of immersion comes at the cost of some serious tedium. e.g. no fucking fast travel. I'm still pretty early in the game, but I can already tell that this game is going to hold my interest for a long time to come. The best description I could come up for the game is that Dragon's Dogma feels like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R of western rpgs.

Now I grew up on JRPG's through and through. I played all the final fantasy's, chronic trigger, earth bound, and secret if mana, etc. But recently they have taken a back seat for me atleast, I haven't really seen any that really drew me to them like they used to. Now i still do play a lot of western rpg's very regularly and it's still my favorite genre but I feel like Japan has been lacking in the new mechanics and concepts department for a while. Just look at final fantasy or even dragon quest, it's becoming similar to cod games where they release a sequel that doesn't really play any different but it takes years longer for them to come out with a new installment.

Now on to ni no Kuni, this game is a masterpiece and really revitalized my love for a genre that I haven't played in years. I'll start with the mechanics, it may seem from the surface a very light rpg that isn't too deep. It just looks so kiddy when I first looked at the game from the graphics I just assumed that it would be a mild rpg with shallow customization so It can be played by a younger audience. That's what surprised me most about this game, I don't think kids could even play a game like this. It pulls a lot of different mechanics from different games but tweaks them in such a way that they feel fresh and new. I think that may be the thing that some people didn't like about the game though, they don't really do anything that new but it feels like a very well put together game. Picture the length and depth of a good final fantasy like 10 or 3, then throw in the combat system of crystal chronicles but better and the familiar system of Pokemon. It just puts the perfect amount of spin on these mechanics to make if feel nostalgic and new at the same time. It doesn't seem like these genres should do well together but it really does.

Now the game is cell shaded for the most of the game and it makes it look like you are playing an anime. This may turn away some people, like the ones who hated wind waker just for the looks. Now I personally love the style of this game but I can see how some people that would be turned away by this. Then the cinematic cut scenes are all actually anime, they are done by studi ghibli, the same people who did spirited away and howls moving castle. Now this was the way I heard about this game and got it mostly cause I love that studio so much, I grew up on their movies instead of Disney honestly. So I feel these cut scenes may do more for me nostalgia-wise than others but I still feel like they are beautiful.

All in all this a game that doesn't do anything new but it breathes life into a genre that has been churning out the same bullcrap for years and I'm having an awesome time with it.

Ni No Kuni - Very awesome RPG on the ps3. It was developed by Level-5 and Studio Ghibli (My Neighbor Tortoro, Howl's Moving Castle). It shiny and fun, reminds me of the Dragon Warrior series. Lots of creatures to collect and fun to be had.

Ragnarok Online 2 - I've always enjoyed playing Ragnarok Online. This has just recently been released so I'm not sure I can give a great review on it. I like it so far. It reminds me of WoW in some ways. But then it's hard to get away from some of the mechanics of WoW in mmo's. Other than that the gameplay has been fun and the story/art is great.

Guru Logic Champ - Fun puzzle game I've been playing on my Caanoo. It's kinda like Magical Drop. You can rotate the screen and add/remove blocks to create a pre-determined picture. Has a good amount of levels to it also. It is one of those games that are fun and frustrating at the same time.

I've been playing a couple games recently. First off is Bioshock Infinite. I just beat the game and I'm looking forward to getting all the skill-based trophies before tackling 1999 mode and 100% the game. I like "equip only 2 weapons system" since it encourages me to actually switch every weapon instead of sticking to one weapon unless it runs out of ammo. I also loved the atmosphere of the game and really liked the fact that I can zoom in at the bottom and see the cities and lights from the sodom below.

The next game game is Red Dead Redemption. I've replayed it after I was craving a wild west game for months. The game is phenomenal and I'm just not saying that out off my ass. It has a great story and a great setting and it really captures the atmosphere of the old times. The npc's were great, too. Instead of just walking around, they would actually do what regular people would do in the past, such as farming or drinking beer. It really immersed me into the game every time I play.

This week I spent a ton of time manufacturing blue stained glass and deploying it. The materials this modpack makes available for building things are amazing, but I really wish I'd picked something else to use; the only convenient way to produce blue stained glass involves, I kid you not, freaking bees. Which, fine, at this point I've bred them to the point where the components are produced quite quickly, but.. man, I just wanted to build something.

Saints Row 3

I liked this game more at the start, when it was completely over the top and brilliantly mocking itself. Now it's just occasionally silly. Still, the sheer ludicrous variety of things to do has been awesome and the game plays very well. Not entirely happy about the presence of upgrade options that would obliterate all gameplay, though..

The game at first glance looks awesome, but after a few hours, it becomes apparent that it's empty on the inside. The big maps become boring quite quickly, and the UI still haunts me in my nightmares. Specially when you have a lot of ships/colonies, managing them becomes annoying.

I'll admit, the game only interested me because of the promotional comics, which are actually quite excellent. Some friends and I decided to grab it at redbox before we shelled out the cash for it. While it's a pretty solid fighter, there is no way I could recommend spending $60. I was expecting Mortal Kombat 9 with DC characters but that's not quite what I got. Id recommend giving it a rental or just checking out the demo before you decide to pick it up.

I've been playing L.A. Noire (PC). It's pretty good, but at times it's incredibly frustrating especially when it comes to interrogations which are sometimes just a guessing game. It's mostly fairly obvious what you should respond with, but at times there's no obvious choice, especially if you've missed a clue. To make it worse there seems to be instances where you can't get the answer right if you visit places in another order than intended. Fortunately you never mess up enough to fail, it seems. Car AI is a bit wonky, I can never trust what other drivers will do (then again, I guess that sort of fits when I think about it).

That said, I enjoy the game overall. I find the inherent mystery solving angle very engaging and there is definitely a sense of "just one more location, then I'll go to bed. Oh crap, it's 1 AM".

Originally the interrogation options were "Coax" (truth), "Force" (doubt) and "Lie", but they changed the labels at the last second for some silly reason. Things make a lot more sense when you view the options like that.

this was a JRPG experment in using the unreal engine for game making by the square enix japan guys and oh my god those guys had no idea what they where doing with the unreal engine. i am running the game off an SSD and i still get massiv ammounts of texture popin that should not happen.

but apart from engine work and the limited assets the game has this is a really intresting game and fun game. you basically controll an army with devisons so you have like 30 guys in your team that you can semi cotumize like they will ask you if you can give them a weapon you have and they will ask what you think they should learn like going magic or melee or both and then later if they should learn buffing or debuffing or become stronger in the area they are allready good at. it is really cool and you never need to worry you are given them the wrong stuff since they know what they need.

my issue with gameplay has to do with how inconsistant the game is on diffculty like i have pretty much done all of the side quests yet during a part of the main story you can get a balls to the walls hard fight when the rest of the main story you are still facing way weak enemies even weaker than those you fight in side missions and that really shouldn't happen.

but it is a damm fun game an bit repetaiv and could have used a bit more polish in terms of graphics and game balance you should pick it up next time you see it on sale.

I just got FEZ on PC, and I'm really enjoying it. I got a gamepad a while back, so that definitely improves the experience. I really enjoy the pacing of the game, and it's a very smooth platformer. The mechanics are well utilized and aren't just a way to make it look pretty. I'm pretty happy with it.

Speaking of the gamepad, I've also been doing a lot of games on emulators. SMB3, LoZ: The Minish Cap, Metroid: Zero Mission, as well as many others. SMB3 is pretty much my favorite Mario game. It's very well put together and has a nice visual style. The Minish Cap is absolutely beautiful and feels very nice. The animations are amazing too. Zero Mission I find to be a very graceful port, with a few little kinks here and there.

I also tried out the demo of Papers, Please. Extremely solid game, very innovative and unique. Art really fits the gameplay well, and the morality theming is very well done and thought-provoking. Very funny at times too.

Lastly, been replaying HL2: Episode 2. I think I would call it my favorite in the series if it were a tad longer. The setting is very cool, and the levels are amazingly thrilling. I love the sort of wave-based "gauntlet" levels that are common in the episodic games in the HL2 series. They're fast paced and very action-packed.

I picked up all the Grand Theft Autos during the sale and I have been playing through 4 now. I really like the story and the themes it tries to convey. I like the way the shooting is it just take a little bit to get used to esp. the hold down the trigger for a little to go into manual aiming (which I prefer). I can get frustrated with the driving physics but it is because they feel life like and I think it actually adds to the game. I's stuck on the mission where You get betrayed in the warehouse. I keep killing all the guys and then the cops shoot me when I am trying to get a car. Overall I think I like GTA more than Saints Row but I would recommend a controller for the game because the ten minutes I used a keyboard sucked. It's an incredible experience so far and I can't wait to try the two dlcs and I know to do BOGT after TLATD.

Yes, trying to beat the mission "Sexy Time" (the helicopter one) in TBoGT was one of the worst experiences I have ever had in a game. After hours of trying, I finally gunned down everyone, then flew the helicopter to land, I hovered about the landing pad.... and then messed up and the helicopter exploded. The last checkpoint was right before the hardest part, and after somehow doing it again, I crashed the Helicopter again. I then quit the game, and Have never played that mission again

I played GTA 4 right after completing Saints Row 3. GTA just felt frustrating and the controls clunky.

I'd heard bad things about the helicopter controls in the game but I assumed the people complaining were just bad at the game where a little fidelity actually was required. Boy was I wrong. I finally completed the first helicopter level after about 20 tries. When I had to use a helicopter again on the final mission, I tried another load of times, but just gave up in the end and looked on youtube for the ending.

I played with a keyboard and it took much too long to figure out those U shaped pillars. The sound was wayyy too subtle. I still really enjoyed it though. Remapping wasd for moving and arrows for rotating the screen made things a little more intuitive. Wish there was more to play. Sad that I'm done :(

I've just picked up Tomb Raider, and so far Roth's dead, it's a great game with one really annoying gameplay problem:
There is so much shooting, even more so than Uncharted. It's not that combat is bad (it's actually pretty tense), it's that some scenarios kept dragging on and on.

I recommend binding the "instinct view" to an out-of-reach key, as you will abuse it like the Arkham games' detective view (it's not quite as OP).

The QTE's weren't as bad as I thought they would be, but there are a couple string of them that might drive some people up the wall, and they seemed to go away later in the game.

I only got it because I had a "buy 2 get one free" coupon and needed something for that free game. I had read and heard from a few people that it was good.

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed. I've done a handful of missions now and I just can't get into the game. I feel like the aiming system is clunky and I don't like not being able to aim properly without being in cover. Also, I really don't like the constant switching from first person to third person. (I'm admittedly not a big fan of first person games but pick a perspective and stick with it.)

I also can't seem to get into the story at all. I want to care about what's going on, I just can't.

I know that a lot of people really like the game but I think it's just not for me.

I have just finished playing Mars War Logs. It is an RPG from the makers of "Of Orcs and Men". It was kinda interesting, but not really all that great. I like the setting, the story is kinda of interesting and some of the missions are interesting. The pacing, the combat and the way the rather interesting story is presented, I didn't like.

I have played a few games of Don't Starve(final beta) and found them really interesting.(Though, didn't win them cause I kept dying) Surviving in the middle of an alien world and having your character go crazy and see his hallucinations come to life and kill him has been really fun. This game has a very unique style and fun gameplay mechanics. Though eventually the resource gathering can get a bit tedious. Overall though, great game, I would definitely recommend it.

I have started playing Star Drive, that game is awesome. Building an empire and fighting for galactic supremacy is always fun. Having real time battles with your giant fleets across the galaxy is the best thing ever. Though the game is still missing some automation features, certain elements of the UI are in need of improvements and diplomacy is still a bit shallow. Overall, really good game though, especially for a game that was written by one person.

After getting it last december and playing for 5-10 hours, I put it down for a while. The text was annoyingly small, I didn't feel like I had much control over battles, and the plot felt somehow depressing. I recently picked it back up with my week off and powered through almost the whole game. New impressions: story is great, music is great and fitting, battle system works well but battles take too long, and grinding is a pain in the ass. Unfortunately I'm now expected to grind up from level 68 to about 75 (3-4 hours work), and I've put the game back on the shelf again for now. Considering how the game had flowed before this I almost think I'm missing something.

Kerbal space program...my god it has changed since I played the demo in October.Being the man that I am I ploughed on without tutorials and managed to get to the mun, but then proceeded to smash into it at 100m/s. it's been great fun though, figuring things out on my own. I'll admit I did think markers would autopilot for me to begin with, but I'm getting better. My rover works perfectly, but I just can't get it to the mun in one piece. I am hiwever having an issue where if I speed up I think it disables the SAS so I have to sit through everything at 1x speed, but I shall persevere! And the training missions shall remain untouched!

I've been playing Papers,Please and have been pleasantly surprised. I'm not a massive PC gamer and have only really played Civ IV on my laptop but Papers,Please was absolutely engrossing.

The way the levels get harder the more you play felt organic, like I wasn't really playing a game but doing a job. Also, the moral choices the game gives you (Turn away a potential criminal who has everything in order and risk losing some of your wages or let him into the country where he then kills someone and is all over the papers.) were done very subtly which I enjoyed.

I originally got into this game because I've been playing a lot of older JRPGs lately. I'm nearly at the end of disc 1 and I really, really like the combat; the stamina system that lets you use multiple strength levels of attacks with each successive attack becoming easier to hit is really engaging. The elements are neat, the magic system is cool and the concept of opposing elements and "field control" are really interesting in a JRPG.

The game falls flat in so many ways, though. When I walk around a new town I want to talk to every NPC, but the nonessential NPCs in this game have so much dialog that I feel like I get rooted down for 20-30 seconds at a time every time I want to talk to one of them. The dialog is cumbersome and a lot of the game is really clunky (part of which was par for the course at the time on the PS1).

The game is too easy. Every boss is relatively easy to beat especially if you play even mildly intelligently by creating field control opposite to its element. You get the opportunity to use any "element levels" left over at the end of a fight to cast any healing spells you have so you're often at full HP at the end of every fight. They give you so much money you can buy 99 of every stat-curing/healing item in the game and sustain that level within a few hours while still having no problems whatsoever keeping yourself decked out with the best equipment at any point in time.

There are a lot of characters. A lot of them feel useless but there are some fun and unique ones. Most of them have their own story and background and some of them are pretty neat.

This game is fun, but lacks the polish I want from a Squaresoft title. It leaves me yearning for this game to have been made with Chrono Trigger visuals in order to allow the dev team to work more on characters, story, etc. rather than graphics on the budget the game had.

Overall it's a fun game with interesting combat mechanics and characters, a nice engaging universe and ~20 party characters, but the more I play it the more I wish I was just playing Chrono Trigger or Suikoden II instead.

The story is as interesting as a I remember, but it's painfully unpolished in a lot of ways.

By default (you can get a mod to fix this) loot like bracelets and rings doesn't stack, and you only have about 20 inventory slots, so you have to make constant trips to a vendor, or to throw away loot.

If you play as a mage, it uses the standard D&D rules of being able to memorize X spells and having to sleep to replenish them. Unfortunately, you can't sleep anywhere inside dungeons, and some of them are pretty big. Budgeting spells and or sitting there while the fighters/thieves work isn't fun.

Even if your character is a mage, he always has to lead the group, so most fights I end up running to the back of the group as soon as a fight starts. That's painfully annoying.

The voice acting in the game is really amazing. I had forgotten what a talented cast they had. Rob Paulsen (Pinky, Donatello, Raphael) is Morte, Jennifer Hale (FemShep, Jean Grey) is Fall-from-Grace and Deionarra, Mitch Pileggi (Col. Caldwell, Walter Skinner) is Dak'kon, Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson) is Nordrom, it just goes on and on. The way they handled the voices is also really clever too. They have a few key phrases said by the voice actors (often when you first meet a character, or at some significant event) but 90% of it is simply written. This way you get a hint of the character's sound and personality, but it remains primarily driven by written dialogue (which is not only cheaper, but also allows you to go at your own pace, rather than at the pace of the voice actor).

I really hope the new Torment game takes some of the more modern game mechanics from things like WoW, Guild Wars 2, etc. while keeping all the amazing writing and storytelling from the original. If they could do something similar with key dialogue done by voice actors but most dialogue simply being written, that would be great.

I've been playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the first time since it's on sale for 320 microsoft point. I've been having a lot of fun with the game and can understand why so many people really enjoy that game. I'm only 3 hours into the game and been spending the whole time exploring the castle. The only complaint I have right now is the sensitivity for the combination of the spells. Also I am loving the really cheesy voice acting.

Another game I have been busy playing is Persona 4 which is an amazing and challenging game. It's on the backburner so I can play Castlevania since I don't have that much time to put it but I am looking forward to putting in more hours this summer and hopefully beat the first optional boss who has been kicking my ass.

Quake Live - Quake 3 was pretty much the perfect FPS, as far as i am concerned, and Quake Live is Q3 with matchmaking and some new maps.
I have more fun in the 10-15 minutes that each match lasts than any other game i recently played. It just goes to show that everything becomes secondary if you get the gameplay right.

I picked up Dead Island for the 360 earlier this week and I'm nearly done with the main story. I feel it is a cross of L4D + FC3 + Borderlands with a ton of mindless "go here, pick up this item and bring it back" quests.

While killing zombies is fun and all, it just feels so mindless. The crafting/weapon modding feels weak and unintuitive. How do I know if I should save that LP500 battery for a future mod or sell it for some cash? Why can't I mark certain items in my inventory so that I don't accidentally sell them? Why is it that when I throw a weapon I have to manually go into my inventory every time and reassign my weapons?

I'm not completely sure if I'm going to get Riptide yet, especially if most of the small bugs I mentioned above aren't fixed. Although my buddies are begging me to get it now <_<

I only played the single player and quit maybe 3/5 of the way through but I think dead island is one of those games that is just better with friends (like LFD and borderlands 1/2) but I did have fun stomping some zombie brains.

Sleeping Dogs: I'm enjoying this game a lot. It feels like a more polished GTA IV. Better graphics, awesome characters, and fantastic Batman-like combat. You really feel like some type of Donnie Yen action hero. The story is fantastic so far, they get you really thinking about what side of the law you want to be on. The car mechanics are awesome, and though you don't get weapons that often, when you do, it feels very crisp.

Neverwinter: Loving it so far. Been playing a Great Weapon Fighter, which starts out a little weaker than the other classes, but apparently picks up around 35-40ish. It has great quests, and each area is instanced, which makes it feel like each quest has more meaning. The dungeons are fantastic, and each class seems to work well together. Granted there are a lot of things that could be fixed in terms of currency, pay 2 play, pvp-balance, etc etc, but it just came out four?five? days ago, and CRYPTIC has been doing a great job with maintenance and patching and listening to the community.

League of Legends: Been playing for 3 years and will continue to promote this game. Find some friends if you think it's no fun solo queue, because most of the time, it isn't. I love the competitive aspect, the ability to outplay your opponants, win match ups, and the strategy. I follow the pro scene extremely closely in NA/EU, and starting to catch up in Korea, China, and SEA. With the Season 3 Championships coming up in the fall, teams have been innovating and getting stronger and it's been a blast to see the evolution of the game since 2009-2010.

I've been playing Mars: War Logs and Don't Starve. Got them off of Steam for $19.99 and $13.49. So far I've put around 9 hours into MWL and 6-7 into Don't Starve.

MWL is a pretty decent RPG for the low price tag. The voice acting is horrible at times, and the story is a bit cheesy but the combat is great, albeit a bit repetitive. The leveling system is interesting as well, but I think that they should have added more skills and/or made them more varied. The equipment upgrading system is nicely done as well.

Don't Starve is a great game if you like survival games. The crafting system is great, the worlds are big and varied, and you can customize the world you start in by changing a bunch of different factors; will the game start in summer or winter, are there more rocks than normal, the day lasts longer that normal, etc. I like the 'insanity' mechanic as well. It has great replay value because that's the way it's been designed.

If you like RPGs and enjoyed the Witcher then MWL could be something for you. It hasn't gotten great reviews, but for the 20 dollar price tag I'd say it's worth it. You should look into Don't Starve if you like The Binding of Isaac and/or Terraria.

I have dozens of games in my backlog, but the game I just keep playing is Persona 4 Golden. I missed out on the PS2 release, and it is my first experience with any megami tensei game.

Man, what an experience. Over the past couple months I've put in about 45 hours and the game shows no signs of stopping. There is so much to do in P4G that I haven't even touched either. The amount of strategies you can use in battle with personas is astounding. I also love the whole feel the game has like I am playing an anime.

Persona 4 Golden alone justified the purchase of the PS Vita for me. I have not been so engrossed in an RPG for years.

I finally actually played Skyrim (hoo boy did I miss that train.) and have sunk about fifteen hours into it. I installed some mods for graphics and UI and a few other things to.

Mostly I've been messing around the Riverwood area, I've been exploring and smithing and practicing magic. I've injected a small amount of roleplaying into my play through (something I had a lot of fun doing in NV) and I'm playing the part of somebody discovering a taste of magic who is still vindictive towards the imperials for almost being executed at the start of the game (recently I crossed a sort of moral horizon by having my character use fury and zombie summoning a to make an Imperial patrol kill themselves.) but is mostly happy to stick to Riverwood. If I continue playing I'll most likely have some kind of dark character arc of going crazy with revenge and power I dunno.

But... One thing that Skyrim has really made stand out for me is honestly how much more I liked New Vegas. New Vegas was just so interesting and it had a main quest that on all three of my playthroughs, I never ignored. When NPCs talk to me in Skyrim, I skim their dialogue, in NV there were countless interesting NPCs to talk to. I've yet to find a cave or fort in Skyrim that didn't just have some boring bandits in it, in NV I actually wanted to explore my radar blips.

It's an amazing game. It really feels like a stealth game that doesn't rely on violence. The variety in classes is great too. Some people say bad things about the Pickpocket, but he's great for getting hard-to-reach coins, and can accumulate ammo really quick. The multiplayer really makes the game though. Often it is a jumbled, disorganized "every man for himself" kind of match, but just as often you get a team that can really work together. Pulling off a smooth heist makes my day, week, and month.

I played Max Payne 3 this week. (huge amount of HDD space required for such a short game). The graphics were good and the gameplay was reminiscent of the first two.

Some of it was frustrating though, and it could not keep my attention for long enough to play it again on a harder difficulty. I imagine it would have been simple more damage to player less to enemies kind of deal.

The setting was actually really cool considering the franchise, I loved that there are not subtitles too so you were just as confused as Max. Story wise the game was not too bad, although it annoyed me that there's a character that Max thinks "has suffered enough" even though he's a monster and someone he wanted to kill just a chapter or two before.

I mentioned the game being short above, it's probably actually a benefit with this, as the gameplay if not something that could keep your attention for much longer. I bought the game for £6.49 and whilst I do think the game is worth more than that, I would have been incredibly disappointed if I paid full price. So my verdict, unless you can get it for tenner I'd pass.

I beat FEZ on PC. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I know Phil Fish gets a lot of hate on the internet in general, but if you can look past that, I think FEZ is a really really great game. I really liked the puzzles that used things outside the game itself int he solutions, like the QR code and the anti cube you get from the hint in the achievement.

I've been playing Just Cause 2 on the PS3 and have been enjoying it, although it took me a while to get past the flaws the game has. I went into the game not knowing the voice acting was hammed up on purpose and I thought I had made a huge mistake. Once I realized it was all a huge joke I began to laugh with joy rather than anger. My only real big problem with the game is the driving, I don't think I ever played a game with worse driving in my life.

Chaos of Three Kingdoms
Its a strategy multiplayer game set in ancient China. If you've ever played any of the Dynasty Warrior games, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, etc, you will be familiar with the game setting and characters. The servers are in Indonesia I believe as most people in my Legion (guild) are Indonesian and speak Bahasa. Which I am slowly picking up a phrase here and there. They also do speak very good english as well. You play as single player strategy for the most part, but when you are finished a map you need more people to help get past the last battle. I am enjoying it not only because I grew up playing Three Kingdom games (NES), but chatting with my legion members is fun.

Kenshi
Indi game. From the Steam page "A free-roaming squad based RPG. Focusing on open-ended sandbox gameplay features rather than a linear story. Be a trader, a thief, a rebel, a mercenary, a business owner, a doctor, a bandit... the list goes on. Research new equipment and craft new gear." This is a game I put down and wait for new updates, then play a lot after the updates. Its still in development and not everything is in the game, but its still really good.

I have also been playing Mechwarrior Online, Far Cry 2, Heroes and Generals, but as those are FPS type games I haven't been playing a lot as I have some wrist issues that limit my time playing that type of game.

Man is this game fun, I haven't even beat the first most wanted race yet, I've just been having fun evading the cops and playing online. I could drive around this game for hours, it's just fun.
I do wish the map was a bit bigger though, I thought it would be. I mean, it's already pretty huge, but I guess my expectation were higher =P

Most recently I've been playing Soul Calibur 2 for the old Gamecube. I hooked it up to play SC2 on it at my birthday two days ago with my bros. Man, this game is as fun as I remember it, it's good playing with my brothers again, we used to play this all the time!
If you've never played any of the Soul Calibur games I suggest you pick up 4 or 5 for the ps/360, or if you do have a cube or xbox pick up the 2nd one.

We spent all day beating eachother up in Soul Calibur and Smash Bros (N64). Was fun.

I've picked up Dishonored again this last week. I decided to go for a clean hands/ghost playthrough on max difficulty. As mentioned before on this sub, one of the frustrating things about this game is that this type of playthrough barely utilizes any of the powers/technologies in the game. I've pretty much only used blink, dark vision, and sleep darts this whole time (although grenades are wonderful at taking out rat swarms in a few scenarios). I've also noticed that being on the hardest difficulty barely makes a difference, since my health and enemies' damage is irrelevant when playing stealth. Enemies' perception is still pretty easy to get around, and I'm a little disappointed by that. As long as enemies aren't alerted, any surface above the first story is pretty much invisible to them. That being said, I still enjoyed the game very much on my first playthrough, and I'm planning on a high chaos/low stealth murder mode playthrough that I hope will satisfy me with some of the game's more creative mechanics. I think if any game deserves a sequel, it's this one. Overall, the environment and story are compelling, but it needs some gameplay improvements to feel like a top of the line game.

Lots and lots of Injustice. I know it's not a MK game but it's the best MK game ever made. The attention to characters, details, combat, mechanics, everything is amazing. I don't know if any part of this game was half-assed other than having 5 batman-related stages.
If you love MK, you'll love this game, if you love the DC universe you'll love this game, and if you appreciate a good fighter you need to play this game.

Fire Emblem: Awakening in Hard/Classic mode. What an excellent game, but it took me a while to get used to things. The few first chapters were hell, units hit hard and a mistake could end in a squadmate getting killed. It gets better, though, after you get side missions and access to grinding and support conversations (which are excellent).

Brink. I had eyed it for a while but it finally dropped in price so I picked it up. I love the smart movement system that allows you to free run, it adds a whole bunch to the game, allows you to effectively escape enemy fire, get to places you couldnt previously, and is just fun to do. I like the character design and unlockables, the weapons were fun and interesting, the characters had a good art style to them, and the custom clothing actually looked pretty cool. The ability to change weight classes between rounds, and therefore your freerunning ability, was also a nice feature

I didn't like the missions at all. In almost every one there was a part where you had to "gaurd the VIP" or "gaurd the safe" for literally ten minutes. It would be fun for the first couple but then you would find a good spot, and just toss grenades and demolish the enemy as they respawned and made a run for the objective. I'm usually not one to complain about repetitivness but this was literally every mission, and always for large amounts of time. I also didn't like the game intro, or lack thereof. the opening cinematic makes you think there will be a long cool story, but in fact there is no story at all. it asks you to pick a side immediatly, but it actually has no consequence at all. It then leaves you at the mission select screen, with no further intro. to learn how to play you actually have to go to the "challenges" section or watch informative movies, which seemed quite odd.

It had good idea's with the smart movement, but the missions and gameplay were a pretty big let down. It seemed as though it was designed to be a sole multiplayer game, then decide to switch halfway through developement or something

Got back into left 4 dead 2. I'm just playing through a friends map that I'm helping make, but it's fun to go back and shoot some zombies. The friendly AI is really helpful. I honestly almost forgot how helpful it is. Maybe it's just because of the map, but it's a bit more difficult than I remember.

So far so good. The game isn't EXTREMLY hard like everyone says it would be, but it is one of the most challenging games currently (difficulty and challenge are NOT the same.) The game flow feels nice and I love that every weapon behaves differntly. Also the weight of your equipment has real consequences on your speed, so you have to sacrifice better Armor/Weapons for more manouvability. However I HATE PvP... it causes cheap deaths and is no fun for low level chars as I have not the slightest chance against these high level characters (hell, some of them might have cheated attributes). I seriously hope that DS2 will only put people together which have approx. the same level.

Number 2: Fallout: Tale of the Two Wastelands
It is a mod for New Vegas AND Fallout 3: it combines both games into one. Add that with th Project Nevada mod for New Vegas and you get a Really cool new experience. You start the game with Fallout 3, however you can find a trainm station in Washington DC which brings you to New Vegas, upon arrival the New Vegas story starts and you can only get back to the Capital Wasteland if you find the train station in the Mojave Wasteland (or use a console command). It is really fun to roam the capital wasteland with all the new features New Vegas brings.

Last on the List Fire Emblem: Awakening
I'm only on chapter 6 (because this game is freakin' hard), however I purchased the DLC missions today which make training your troops much, much easier. You really have to think ahead in this game and restart missions over and over until you figure out a way to win this map without losing a single unit (as I'm playing in classic mode w. permadeath on). It's called a must-have for the 3DS... but I won't recommend it for beginners, as even the lowest difficulty is still extremly hard for strategy beginners and casual gamers. FE:A is as "hardcore" as it gets in terms of mobile strategy gaming. But hey: welcome to Japanese tactic-RPGs motherfucker!

I actually was burned out on games a while ago and these 3 really immerse me. Next on my "to buy" list is going to be Dragon's Dogma.

Right now I'm trying out Ragnarok Online 2. When I was younger, I enjoyed playing the original. Of course, it's kind of weird to see those familiar monsters in CG rather than pixels, so I keep going "woah!"
The game itself seems easier than its predecessor, but I find that many games are like that now. (Here's looking at you, Pokemon.)
I'm also assisting my boyfriend as he tests out his upcoming indie game, which has been sort of exhausting. We're in the last part, though, so that's nice. Just have to polish up some art, and the mechanics are doing fairly well. Then I just have to figure out distribution and advertising. shrug Challenge accepted.

I've been playing Project M. Installed it yesterday on my Wii (it's a Super Smash Bros. Brawl Mod), and I've been having a ball. It's so much better than vanilla Brawl it's ridiculous. It might even be better than Melee, given a few tweaks that are sure to come in future patches.

I started last September but stopped because school got in the way. I recently started over and have been having a great time playing it. I'm a fan of being able to choose your play style. You can go in guns blazing or you can take a more stealthy approach.

I also like that most of the abilities and powers aren't necessary. That way you can obtain and upgrade them in whatever order you like. It makes it easier to fit your abilities to your play style.

The one thing I don't like is that I suspect I'm getting near the end and the game was kind of short.

I'm not a big shooter fan and played this because a friend recommended it. It's a standard 3rd person shooter gameplay wise as far as I can say. Nothing too special but not too shabby either.

The story though is simply amazing (and maybe a bit depressing). With the looks of a AAA game for the pricing of an indie game. I can't tell how much I liked how the game is done. If you haven't played it you really should. For me, this one stands out and I hope more games would be like this. Nothing wrong in taking robust gameplay mechanic to just tell an awesome story.

I even want to replay it (on easy just for the story) to see which of my choices really mattered. And I rarely replay any game once I'm done with it.

Just Cause 2

I love this game. Started playing on PC a few weeks ago, and I play it whenever I have time. I enjoyed the story. The faction quests are pretty repetitive, but still fun. I just started using some mods too, and if you haven't done that yet, do it.

Lately, I've been playing Crusader Kings II. Very enjoyable Total War type map mode game without turns. Lots of fun, almost two hundred hours put into that game, and I've still barely played half of the options. Crazy awesome dlc coming out soon as well so now's the time to buy.

This game is wonderful. It has it's quirks, which is not surprising due to it still being an open beta. Other than the quirks it is an amazing game. I've put 80+ hours in the past 2 1/2 weeks in this game and don't see myself slowing down too soon. I've been grinding to get resources and other things to build a new character I've been looking forward to.

If you haven't heard of Warframe you should definitely check it out considering it's a F2P game and practically everything can be obtained through playing the game (minus cosmetic stuff and other small things). Even though it's free I've already dropped $10 of in game currency on it and plan on buying more soon. It's a great game

Gameplay-wise there was little to offer beyond fairly good (though often clunky and unresponsive) 3rd person cover shooting. Ai and level design were also fairly good, but the art and environmental design are truly noteworthy. High level of realism alongside some beautiful post-apocalyptic Dubai ruins.

Overall it wont blow your sock off as a game but as a narrative, I really appreciated a bit of real angst and frustration with the medium and the fans and even global politics. Really worth a look, a step forward in interactive storytelling!

Over the past few months I've been playing a whole slew of grand strategy games, mostly with a space theme, but a few from paradox interactive as well.

Overall, I think I'm just about done with the genre, at least as far as single-player goes. The AI in these games is universally terrible, and I just can't abide the rampant cheating that passes for higher difficulty levels.

Moreover, almost every single game I've played - Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis 3, Sins of a Solar Empire, Sword of the Stars 2, to name the big ones - winds up with the same learning curve: everything is confusing in the beginning and because of that it feels like the games have a lot of depth. Once I learn the systems, the illusion of depth disappears almost instantly, and I'm left with a game where the "right" way to play is obvious and tedious, and that leaves me with nothing but spare time and attention to harp on all of the bugs, poor design decisions, and missing features - all three of which seem to abound in these types of games, even years after their initial commercial releases.

I'm tempted to say that until AI improves, this genre might as well be dead. It seems like the only two options are to know you've won when the game's barely begun, or to start off with a giant handicap that allows the terrible AI to win even when it makes all of its terrible decisions.

I just got Blood Dragon. I'm 42 and a big fan of 80's action flicks, because of that I enjoyed Arnie's come back as a sheriff, Arnold as a bad ass, etc. I love cheesy action flicks. This game is the best thing I've played in a long time, not because complexity or shiny graphics or the story, but because of the fun, the cheesy lines; badassery at its best.
Great game after the disappointment of Star Trek, which my friend, even if she is a big fan of Chris Pine so she made me get the thing, hated too after the first big mob.

Two games this week. The first is Tomb Raider, and man has this game been a pleasant surprise. The gameplay is some of the most fun I've experienced in quite a while. The cover system is just so good, and the enemies seem smart without being obnoxious. Definitely enjoy this game.

The other game i just picked up was Ico/SoTC. I started Ico and must say I am really not enjoying it. The camera and controls are very frustrating, and the girl does not break the trend of escort missions sucking. Im hoping I will eventually experience and enjoy some good puzzle design to carry this game up a little. The environment and atmosphere are top notch, though.

Planetside 2. Still like the game. Was finally able to get together with a few people of my Outfit (=Guild) again and we had some fun. Problem at the moment is IMO the in some cases pretty significant population imbalance as one of the three factions has a lot more players on most servers and thus ends up dominating in many fights. Additionally, apparently sniper rifles are not one-hit-kills anymore with headshots. Which I find really strange. It's usually already hard enough to land that one hit. Lastly I find the recently introduced Pump-action shotguns to be horribly imbalanced due to them being able to reload way too fast for being one-shot-kill weapons. People are able to clean up whole groups of enemies using those, even if said enemies see them coming. I still really like my Decimator rocket launcher (dumbfire but max damage) with which I rip enemy fighters apart like there's no tomorrow as it's a one-shot-kill but very tricky to land. Usually only works when they're not careful which they are often when they think no one is around.

I also played Game Dev Tycoon for about a day in total which is about what it took for me to figure out what made money and what didn't. I don't really see the point in ever playing that game again since there are very little random factors in it regarding what topic / genre combinations are effective and which systems prevail. Always plays out the same which is disappointing since it robs the game of any replayability for me after you figure out how to play correctly.

I also got game dev tycoon this week. I probably won't play it again for the same reasons you mentioned, but I did spend quite a lot of time playing it and feel it was actually worth the money for how surprisingly engaging it was.

In anticipation for Ace Attorney 5, I'm replaying the original trilogy again starting with Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney. I still love the stories and characters and wish there was a way for me to develop amnesia so I didn't already know how all the cases ended. That's the one issue I have with games like Phoenix Wright; they're still good to replay, but it's never the same the second time through.

Playing The Secret World MMO an MMO based in a setting where secret societies and the supernatural world exist. I looked down on it when I first heard about it but decided to give it a go after getting a craving for an MMO of any sorts. I'm enjoying myself so far, it's a bit different from your usual MMOs in that you don;t pick up a tonne of quests at once, you pick up a main "mission' which will trigger a cutscene giving you a bit of backstory then that mission will have different tiers of tasks. The missions can be standard Kill so many enemies fare, but Secret World really innovates with these difficult investigation missions, that are like something out of Indiana Jones or national treasure, such as a riddle requiring you to find a bible passage that then needs to be translated to latin to walk on lettered steps. There are also "stealth" missions which also serve to mix things up a bit.

Combat is kind of interesting, there are no locked in classes, you get Ability Points to spend on a skill wheel to learn abilities and passives, which means eventually you can know every skill in the game. Combat is rather standard, with most classes having a resource builder then a powerful move that will use the resources up.

The atmosphere and design of the game is awesome, A few missions that took me to haunted areas legitimately creeped me out. Sound and music are used really effectively to make you immersed in this creepy yet magical world.

The downside is the game is low on population, and it often does not feel like a Mass Multiplayer game, Also it isn't very clear on how to do certain things, crafting is a pain and a new player (like myself) can find themselves getting swamped.

Holy hell, is this game fun. For anyone who doesn't know, what you're supposed to do in this game is build a vehicle that will complete certain tasks involving a crash test dummy. It's very similar to Fantastic Contraption in that sense, but it's in 3D instead of 2D. It's still in early alpha so there are a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of bugs in the game, from imploding vehicles to vanishing parts. It's also pretty badly optimized, so even if you have a processor capable of running all those simulations, you may experience some hefty framerate drops. It's so satisfying to come up with designs that work really well after a lot of tries.

I've also been playing Insurgency.

Like Crashtastic, it's in early alpha. If the name sounds familiar to you, then you've probably played the mod. This is a standalone version that's available on Steam early access. To anyone who has no idea what this game is, it's basically the bastard child of ARMA and CS. You get really fast-paced action in a pretty realistic shooter. Think Red Orchestra 2 levels of realism. It is really good, if a bit clunky. The balancing is spot on, as far as I can tell, the maps are decently-sized, the guns sound great, the aiming feels realistic, I could go on. However, it has it's flaws. Firstly, the character models for the heavy class look very similar for either team. Secondly, the spawns are COMPLETELY broken. No, seriously, the exits to the spawns are effectively just long and narrow choke points with plenty of cover for the enemy to take you out. On one map, one of the spawn exits of both teams are literally (and I do mean literally) next to each other. I know it's in alpha, but I fail to see how you could fundamentally screw something up so badly. Other than the completely aggravating spawns, though, the game is brilliant so far.

Trying to finish off SMBU. bowsers castle has been on the backburner for over a month. and then back to Ni No Kuni

kinda doubting if i'll stay interested long enough to finish NNK. as a 34 yr old RPG vet. the kid gloves on that game might drive me away from it. Its an amazing game with alot of love injected into every facet of it though. that might be what kept me going this long

Takes of Graces f. I finally finished the Legacies and Lineages epilogue and started a New Game +. Love the combat system in this game. The story was cheesy as shit but that's par for the course in jrpgs.

Finally got around to Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2. I wasn't a fan of the first one, which made me reluctant to try it, but holy damn. I pretty much fell in love with it. Aside from the atrocious voice acting, they've improved everything dramatically. I look forward to getting 100% on it and playing the third one.

Honestly, there needs to be WAAAAY more save points. Either that, or they need to be more obvious. The 100 first minutes of gameplay were pretty positive, but as soon as I encountered an enemy that I didn't know, and was 1-shot, I had to sit through the entire opening sequence AGAIN. It doesn't help that these 100 first minutes involve buying a sword and farming enemies in order to even stand a chance.

I could try to open again and very carefully figure out where the first save point is, but right now I feel like this game really pulls out the worst part I remember from retro gaming.

Besides my regular games (FTL, Terraria) Ive been playing Tomb Raider 2013 and I tried out Neverwinter.

Tomb Raider is great fun, although it relies a bit much on quick time events and cinematic events.

Neverwinter I found to be mind boggling boring. To be fair I didn't make it very far (Guardian fighter) but I just couldn't keep playing it it was so dull. I might give it another try, maybe with a different class.

Dominions III. It's a pretty solid, indie strategy game, using the strategy map systems of Risk, with the RPG elements of HOMM. There are over twenty different factions to choose from which range from Roman-esque legions to underwater cities. I recommend it.

Still playing diablo 3 a bit. I do a few runs here and there. Anxiously awaiting the new patch.

Still mess with black ops 2 depending on who's online.

Enjoying my replay of...final fantasy 7. Loving it. Ever since I discovered psone emulators for my android I've been on a tear. Brings back memories and makes me realize how much I miss the quality of older games. You are rewarded for your skill and time put into a game and there's no pay to win or pay for this armor skin or weapon skin etc. That feature really turns me off in newer games. Darksiders 2 was ruined for me because of this. I look to see what's on the ps store for dl'able content and its ridiculous. Armor sets, minor map packs etc.
Some map packs are done well, but when its a clear money grab its a huge turn off.

Still working on completing Farcry 3. I think the pc graphical glitches turned me off from it slightly. But still an amazing game